[Forked from the Escapist Magazine Interview Thread] What implications does E...

[Dannyalcatraz]

That would need to be a VERY close neighbouring building with a conveniently placed window.

Roman-era apartment buildings were placed about 10-20' apart, well within the range of the eladrin's teleport. And like the modern buildings, they had windows- and occasionally balconies-placed in regular grids. The window doesn't need to be square on, just open enough to let an eladrin have LoS on the room.

Look, 25 feet (not 30) is close enough for a decent running jump. Granted, not in armour, but, heh, it's certainly not that far to jump. I think you are really overestimating how far you can teleport here. Eight paces. That's it. Well, maybe 9 if you have short legs. The room you are in right now is likely 25 feet across. Certainly a fairly normal sized living room in an American home.

Actually, you're overestimating how good a jumper most people are. 25' for a running jump would not be decent, that would be beyond the World Record set in 1901, which stood for 20 years. It would be another 7 years before anyone cleared 26'. And that's carrying no extra mass in the form of gear.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_jump_world_record_progression

I don't know about you, but I'm sure the jumper would want more than 12" of room for error before jumping a gap, 5 stores up.

Now, it will not take the pursuit force 5 minutes to get back downstairs and into the adjacent building. But it may well take them that long or longer to find the quarry as they have to check behind every door- and the roof- because the eladrin will not simply sit in the room targeted by the jump.

 

[skotothalamos]

That would need to be a VERY close neighbouring building with a conveniently placed window.

Look, 25 feet (not 30) is close enough for a decent running jump. Granted, not in armour, but, heh, it's certainly not that far to jump.

The current world record for a running long jump is 29 feet. That's a professionally-trained specialist with no encumbrance using specialized equipment in ideal conditions: track spikes on a synthetic track for maximum traction, clothing that is not far from nudity, stretching, warming up, doing no other strenuous activities that day, and complete mental focus on the task.

I would say its it's a long stretch that jumping 25 feet (farther than the women's world record, and on-par with the men's from about 60 years ago) is "not that far to jump."

* Pet Peeves Include: ridiculous jumping rules from every edition of D&D.

 

[Neonchameleon]

OMG, I'm SOOOOOOOOOsorry I forced you to use bolded text to scold me.

I'm not 100% savvy with the 4Ed rules, and I'm not sitting with them in front of me.

Apparently you do not know what a short rest is. That isn't not being 100% savvy with the 4E rules - that's not getting a basic concept of 4E. (Of course this is distinctly better than [MENTION=2067]Kamikaze Midget[/MENTION]'s "birding" in which Eladrin not only don't need a short rest but they get to defy gravity).

Stop strawmanning my posts. In no way did I say or imply that a RW sniper sits stationary while being hunted for.

I'm not strawmanning your posts. I'm critiquing them based on the actual rules of 4E and what people do in the real world. And frankly they don't measure up.

Did you follow my Spot the Sniper link? Teleporting out of blinds like that would make it obvious both where the sniper was and where they will be.

My continued and unchanged assumption is that eladrin start from the same strategic and tactical base point as RW units, then improve them via teleportation.

Your second assumption is that the people facing Eladrin will be extremely stupid and do nothing about any Eladrin tactics, as evident in your "Death from above".

The key difference is that the eladrin does not have to expose himself by physically covering the intervening distance. That makes him harder to spot when he does change position.

The second key difference is that the Eladrin will just appear out of nowhere, their camouflage being mismatched to the new environment, and drawing the eye to both locations because of the sudden movement. Which means that both where they started from and where they moved to will be much more visible. First rule of stealth: Make no sudden movements. And you don't get much more sudden than teleporting, that's the point.

Now, if you want to suggest pre-prepared Eladrin defensive positions would be different from human ones, that I'll grant. Trying to invade an Eladrin city, unless warfare has rules like the city surrenders after the first breach or it gets sacked, would be a nightmare.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Did you follow my Spot the Sniper link? Teleporting out of blinds like that would make it obvious both where the sniper was and where they will be.

Yes I did.

The eladrin does not have to make any special movement to teleport. While you might see the visual void created by his disappearance, there will be no guarantee that where he popped to will be in the LoS of his pursuers. Nor is it a guarantee that his chamo will not match his new location. Why would you assume that it wouldn't?

A modern ghillie suit doesn't match one little 5'x'5' piece of land. Instead, the wearer customizes it so that resembles his surroundings in general, allowing movement- slow, yes, but movement nonetheless- from position to position. The better trained soldiers can do so even while under observation.

When the position change is instantaneous, there is no intervening movement to detect.

While it is movement, it is not movement in the tradiitional sense.

Your second assumption is that the people facing Eladrin will be extremely stupid and do nothing about any Eladrin tactics, as evident in your "Death from above".

I'm not assuming anything of the kind. I expect tactics to evolve. But I was not aware that in this discussion, I had to post, not only the eladrin tactics to beat a RW problem, but also the world's response to it. I thought that is why we were having a discussion, rather than a series of monologues.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

People who've been subjected to the forces required to launch them into the air and over walls with a trebuchet are going to have multiple broken bones even before they land, and that assumes they don't simply pass out on launch and fail to react. This is car crash at 90mph level in terms of how much injury it inflicts.

I'm not so sure of that- we do have pilots, astronauts, and even amusement park riders who have subjected themselves to significant acceleration forces repeatedly without injury.

...But I admittedly don't have the data to compare a catapult (siege engine) launch to any of those modern analogs.

 

[I'm A Banana]

(Of course this is distinctly better than @Kamikaze Midget 's "birding" in which Eladrin not only don't need a short rest but they get to defy gravity).

Dude, they stand in a tree branch and whiz off of it onto the heads of people on the path below. They get up in the tree branches by looking at a particularly sturdy bough and *bamfing* up there. Interpreting that post is not rocket surgery (nor is it particularly special to teleportation, really, teleporting just makes it a lot easier -- you don't need to climb the tree, you just blink up there).

Methinks you are reading these things with blinders on.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Yes I did.

The eladrin does not have to make any special movement to teleport. While you might see the visual void created by his disappearance, there will be no guarantee that where he popped to will be in the LoS of his pursuers. Nor is it a guarantee that his chamo will not match his new location. Why would you assume that it wouldn't?

There are at-will rogue utilities that let a rogue break cover and still use Stealth. So while an eladrin is more tactically flexible, humans, halflings, etc can do this by the rules.

 

[Hussar]

I suppose that is a setting effect though DannyA. Eladrin cities would not resemble Rome. They would build a little further apart to avoid this sort of thing.

Lends a lot to the whole airy Elven cities thing.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Dude, they stand in a tree branch and whiz off of it onto the heads of people on the path below. They get up in the tree branches by looking at a particularly sturdy bough and *bamfing* up there. Interpreting that post is not rocket surgery (nor is it particularly special to teleportation, really, teleporting just makes it a lot easier -- you don't need to climb the tree, you just blink up there).

Methinks you are reading these things with blinders on.

Dude, humans can climb trees and balance in them. And most trees are climbable - especially in 4e (although the 4E situation is not as ridiculous as the 3e one with The Standard Tree). However people as a rule don't do this. Climbing trees isn't hard.

Methink you are being ridiculous.

Now Eladrin playing knock-down-ginger - knocking on someone's door and running away, that I can see.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

From the other thread:



I'm sorry, but, what implications?

A 30 foot teleport, line of sight only, 1/5 minutes has what impact on the world? I just really don't see it.

Dragon and Dungeon do talk about Mithrendain and various peculiarities of the city and its defenses that are related to short-range teleportation. There's an article about the city, which details some things about homes and other buildings, and then there was an adventure (not a great one, but with some usable material in it, Dark Heart of Mithrendain) that has a few things in it too.

The thing is, teleport is LoS only, so you can't teleport through walls. Thus any place that doesn't have windows or something like that is secure. Close the door of your house, and its secure. In fact the entrances can be on roofs just to make them more secure from street level non-teleporters.

I'd also like to point out that nothing really states that ALL eledrin can teleport. All ADVENTURER eledrin can teleport, and AFAIK all the monster eledrin can do so. This doesn't mean that ordinary folk have this ability.

Finally, this sort of griping is silly. The implications of Light, healing, and magical food creation are surely much more significant yet nobody complains that they can't wrap their heads around THAT. The whole post was just an edition war excuse.

It IS fun to think about this stuff though.