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

[dd.stevenson]

Eldarin gates made of stationary gelatinous cubes. Only those who can teleport can pass through, and good riddance to those who come blundering into the clear gap in the walls.

Eldarin military tactics center on exploiting their maneuverability.

Windows made of tinted glass, since even a small gap between the curtain and the window would allow an intruder to get in undetected.

Small gaps or holes in walls are taken seriously, since they're in effect an unlocked door. Walls are made of materials resistant to being drilled through.

Outside of their own society, Eldarin criminals are likely to have their eyes put out.

No one is allowed within 35' of the king, to prevent anyone from teleporting behind and shanking him. (Similiar to the movie Hero.)

That's all off the top of my head.

 

[Blackwarder]

Things like this make me want races guides, with the focus being on architecture, society, and general way of life rather than simply adding more mechanical options for players.

Warder

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I love looking at race abilities like that and looking at the Worldbuilding implications. Such as the eladrin (and elf) ability to trance instead of sleep. Without sleep, large beds would be unecassary, as would large rooms to contain them. There might be more simple meditation chambers, and personal room might be more rare. House might have storage closets rather than rooms.

Burglary, home invasions, and theft would inform eladrin design. I can see curtains and one-way glass being used. The rarity wouldn't matter. No one has ever tried to just walk into my house but I still have locks on the doors.
It'd be fun to describe rich eladrin homes as being mirrored on the outside to make spotting the windows harder but allowing views from the interior.
Houses might be built farther apart to prevent people just teleporting from roof to roof. (This might be a fun justification for the slender spires you often see, so someone teleporting atop just slides off.

Wagons and carriages might always be covered to avoid people just sneaking a ride.

I can can see ladders being less common, replaced with poles for sliding down.

Eldarin gates made of stationary gelatinous cubes. Only those who can teleport can pass through, and good riddance to those who come blundering into the clear gap in the walls.

Eldarin military tactics center on exploiting their maneuverability.

Windows made of tinted glass, since even a small gap between the curtain and the window would allow an intruder to get in undetected.

Small gaps or holes in walls are taken seriously, since they're in effect an unlocked door. Walls are made of materials resistant to being drilled through.

Outside of their own society, Eldarin criminals are likely to have their eyes put out.

No one is allowed within 35' of the king, to prevent anyone from teleporting behind and shanking him. (Similiar to the movie Hero.)

That's all off the top of my head.

I was thinking about some of that earlier, but didn't have time to post!

The King's Road- the main thoroughfare for nobility between eladrin settlements- might be at least 70-80' wide where possible, in order to make it difficult for an assassin to close on the via teleportation.

Eladrin would chew up pike squares.

I don't think spires would be that prevalent- a cheaper alternative is seen today where people top walls with broken glass.

 

[dd.stevenson]

Hm. Some 4E questions. Does teleportation preserve momentum? How much weight can a person carry while teleporting? Does line of sight include magically aided vision?

 

[Tuft]

No one is allowed within 35' of the king, to prevent anyone from teleporting behind and shanking him. (Similiar to the movie Hero.)

The King's Road- the main thoroughfare for nobility between eladrin settlements- might be at least 70-80' wide where possible, in order to make it difficult for an assassin to close on the via teleportation.

Barrels. Put important personages in armored barrels, each tight enough that a second Eladrin cannot blink into it. Barrels on wheels.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Barrels. Put important personages in armored barrels, each tight enough that a second Eladrin cannot blink into it. Barrels on wheels.

While it does add the advantage of camouflage & decoys, it does raise the specter of a saboteur simply turning the King into a barrel of Crown Royal...

Barring that, if the personage is a claustrophobe, you lose the advantages gained- malfeasors will be able to identify the target by the muffled screams and the smell of uric acid.

 

[Bluenose]

The average height for curtain walls in a survey of English castles was 28 feet. So making them just a little higher, which was after all perfectly practical - 28 feet is the average, so some are certainly taller - makes the "problem" of Eladrin begin able to teleport to the top of them rather irrelevant. It's also possible to have a moat wider than thirty feet, if you're still worrying about Eladrin invasion. Real people devise counter-measures to real ways of attacking, and I doubt if fictional people wouldn't be able to devise counter-measure to fictional methods of attack. Especially when they're as simple as making walls slightly higher than your normal ones.

Edit: And come to think of it, a dry ditch instead of a moat easily adds another few feet to the distance required to teleport onto the walls when you stand at the bottom of them.

 

[Hussar]

Meh, palanquins work. Covered wagon works. I mean, what's the difference with real world medieval kings? A crossbow works at considerably longer range than ten paces.

But, no, momentum is not carried over by Raw. Weight limits are what you are carrying iirc.

Magically aided vision maybe works. It's not easy to get but possible. So you could teleport around corners if you are set up right with the right class.

 

[Hussar]

I'm really not seeing the issue here. Take teleporting through windows. What's the difference from simply opening the shutter. If your medieval people are so rich that every window actually has glass so high quality that you can see clearly through it, I would find that far more anachronistic and unbelievable than blink elves.

Heck, stained glass windows or waxed paper windows fix that problem.

If an assassin is within 25 feet of the king, somebody has already seriously screwed up. He can just move and kill the king. He doesn't need teleport.

Vs pike formations runs into that whole 1/short rest problem. Sure they avoid you once. But you simply press forward. They can't do it again.

DDNFan, what adventure are you talking about?

 

[I'm A Banana]

But even somewhat older children would likely have enough sense of self preservation not to get killed.

Teenagers.

The phenomenon that gives birth in the real world to everything from bullfighting to horror movies to, hell, intimacy would give you a lot of dead Eladrin teens who pushed the envelope of teleportation just a bit too far.

Given all the other inherent absurdities in D&D, the idea that something like limited-use Feystep (especially given that we have Drow societies with at-will levitation that don't illicit the same incredulity) strains fantasy world credulity is absurd. Like I said, when I read it in the other thread it just came off as another case of edition war curve fitting against 4e.

I think the simpler explanation is just that people have different things that break their credulity. It's a subjective measurement. Big swords, spikey armor, blink elves, magical healing, dragons, whatever...different things break different peoples' willing suspension of disbelief at different points.

Part of the thing with eladrin in 4e was that the game presumed your acceptance of them -- they were "hard-coded" into the rules. Getting rid of them was like getting rid of dwarves. If they broke your credulity, too bad, mate.

Looks like with the idea of "Basic as Core" 5e will avoid that implication, making a bamfy elf something you can opt into if its appealing.

I'm really not seeing the issue here.

I don't think you have to. You just have to accept that other people can have issues with things that you yourself don't have. It doesn't have to be an issue for you. Waive it away however you'd like.

I mean, I see it changing some stuff a bit, and I don't have a problem with it, but I like me a bit of high fantasy weirdness. Someone who wanted a more strictly pseudo-medieval game might not like the presence of blink elves in it. That's fair. It's also fair for someone to like eladrin and not think there's a lot that changes. It's not something there's one true answer for that everyone needs to subscribe to, yeah?