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

[Hussar]

Natural light on the ground floor is absolutely reasonable.

You could blink into this.

Sorry, nope. You just got denied by a strip of curtain. No line of sight. Can you see anything through those windows? I certainly can't.

Or this[

Damn those curtains. Again, sorry, nope. No LOS.

[quote

Or this.
[/quote]

This one might be possible, because I can see a few things through those very modern glass windows that are perfectly transparent. Granted, I still can't actually see into the room, and again, this is broad daylight, not a moonlit night through a keyhole, but, sure, maybe.

Definitely not every house. And yeah, you could break the window on any of those and get the same effect. But hell, a ground floor window is basically asking to be robbed by an eladrin. Only thing stoppin' 'em is the honor system.

Well, that and curtains.

You're talkin' anachronistic in a world of teleporting elves and fire-breathing dragons, mang. It doesn't defy the fantasy genre to have keyholes or ground-floor windows. And if you have a world where folks can use a window as a means of keyless entry, you're possibly having to re-think those things. And not everyone wants to.

Keyholes that go all the way through the door are for doors that can be locked and unlocked from both sides with a single key. Wouldn't you simply bolt the door? Or, hey, here's a thought, in an eladrin world, make locks that don't go all the way through the door? I know that's a major change to the setting and all, but, hey, it would fix the problem.

No, windows are not keyless entry points. They really aren't. Not when you have curtains. Note, we're also talked about windows with glass, which only really applies to very wealthy homes. Anyone poorer just has an open hole in the side of their house with shutters. Again, not stopping people who just hop on through. And, we're talking about windows with such perfect quality that you can see through them clearly at distance. Have you actually seen medieval glass? It looks like a funhouse mirror.

So, no, you really don't have to rethink things. The implication here is that the game designers are so clueless that they would add something to the game without a single thought of the ramifications of that addition. While I might have varied opinions about game designers, I don't really think that they are that out of touch with world building that they would add something that would have such huge ramifications without thinking about it. Nor would I assume that anyone who uses Eladrin in their game is so oblivious as to never consider these ramifications either. Yet, this is the very first time I've every heard anyone really bitch about the ramifications of teleport. You'd think it would have come up long ago if it really was such a major thing.

 

[Hussar]

Y'know, just for S&G, let's examine some actual D&D castles and towns and see how much impact a 25 foot LOS teleport would have. I just happen to have the Keep on the Borderlands handy. So, let's start there.

Getting over the walls.

"The walls of the outer bailey are almost 30 feet high and the walls of the inner bailey average 60 feet." Nope, not getting over

"the great gate - a drawbridge flanked by 30 foot high watch towers". Nope, still not getting through.

Oh, and once you get through the portcullis, you are faced by a honking big door. The door does have a small trap door that can be opened to talk through but, it does have to be opened.

So, our trusty eladrin sneak is foiled by a forty year old module. Hrm, no changes need to be made yet. How about inside?

Reading over the module, it doesn't actually mention much about windows or the like in any case, so, we are pretty much left to our own devices. The 25th Anniversary module mentions that doors are almost always left open during the day with children going in and out of homes frequently during the day. Night time, we're not sure, but, again, it would be very unlikely to have glass windows here. You'd need to open up the shutters to get in.

Be interesting to look at some other setting bases, like Orlane or Hommlet, (I don't believe either of those are walled - so, it might be a bit more eladrin friendly) to see how far you could get with a fey step.

 

[Jester David]

Y'know, just for S&G, let's examine some actual D&D castles and towns and see how much impact a 25 foot LOS teleport would have. I just happen to have the Keep on the Borderlands handy. So, let's start there.

Getting over the walls.

"The walls of the outer bailey are almost 30 feet high and the walls of the inner bailey average 60 feet." Nope, not getting over

"the great gate - a drawbridge flanked by 30 foot high watch towers". Nope, still not getting through.

Oh, and once you get through the portcullis, you are faced by a honking big door. The door does have a small trap door that can be opened to talk through but, it does have to be opened.

So, our trusty eladrin sneak is foiled by a forty year old module. Hrm, no changes need to be made yet. How about inside?

Reading over the module, it doesn't actually mention much about windows or the like in any case, so, we are pretty much left to our own devices. The 25th Anniversary module mentions that doors are almost always left open during the day with children going in and out of homes frequently during the day. Night time, we're not sure, but, again, it would be very unlikely to have glass windows here. You'd need to open up the shutters to get in.

Be interesting to look at some other setting bases, like Orlane or Hommlet, (I don't believe either of those are walled - so, it might be a bit more eladrin friendly) to see how far you could get with a fey step.

It's certainly easier to build a 35ft tall siege tower than a 60ft tower. And being able to just teleport to the top in a standing position rather than pulling yourself up would leave yourself less vulnerable. And if scaling ladders don't go all the way to the top they're harder to push off.

 

[pemerton]

any toddler can do it

Is there anywhere in the 4e rulebooks that say that eladrin toddlers can teleport?

Eladrin could position themselves every 25ft between two cities.. and ready actions to teleport.. then in a single 'round' of action, a messenger could teleport (move), drop a message bag into the hands of the next waiting Eladrin (free), who teleports and repeats, and the message bag is in the next city within a single round. Fun!

As has been pointed out by others, this has nothing to do with the teleport rules. The same logic permits a message to be carried across an open plain if every character delays until after the previous runner reaches them.

Luckily no one treats D&D's stop-motion combat resolution mechanics (including its action economy) as an actual model of the physics of the gameworld - do they?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Natural light on the ground floor is absolutely reasonable.

You could blink into this.

Or this

Or this.

Definitely not every house. And yeah, you could break the window on any of those and get the same effect. But hell, a ground floor window is basically asking to be robbed by an eladrin. Only thing stoppin' 'em is the honor system.



You're talkin' anachronistic in a world of teleporting elves and fire-breathing dragons, mang. It doesn't defy the fantasy genre to have keyholes or ground-floor windows. And if you have a world where folks can use a window as a means of keyless entry, you're possibly having to re-think those things. And not everyone wants to.

Oh, come now. Very few doors in history had through keyholes. If you had teleporting elves that can slip through a keyhole you'd just design a different type of keyhole, its not a big deal. Likewise VERY few buildings in history had ground floor windows. Even today in most cities its uncommon to have windows such that people can see in off the street. Look at things like villas and whatnot, they don't have exterior windows at all, certainly not ground floor ones.

I can see some slight changes in architecture existing due to Fey Step, but it need not be huge. The walls of eladrin castles might be a bit taller, but most castle walls are at least 25' anyway, and its debatable that you could teleport over a crenellation anyway. Likewise things like towers. Yeah, you can teleport across a ditch or past a bunch of stakes, or through an open guarded passage if its not too far, but that isn't going to make a HUGE difference.

Eladrin have some very minor advantages as say skirmishers and scouts, being able to get past a few obstacles or get past the first ranks of an enemy, but none of these things are radically far beyond what elite human soldiery could accomplish, even ignoring the possibilities of magic. Given that magic makes things like flying, mass area affect magic, invisibility, etc possible anyway its debatable that Fey Step would have a really radical impact on military tactics beyond these other things. Given that eladrin are generally thought of as rare almost to the point of non-existence outside the Feywild its arguable they have close to no impact on the world at large.

Interesting, yes, somehow radically provoking an entire rethink of D&D society? Not really. Make your keyholes so they aren't through holes and don't have lower floor windows that grant a view into buildings, and maybe a couple other architectural innovations (passages that aren't straight, city gates that have a jog in the tunnel going through the wall, etc. and you're fine. These will be interesting conversation points, but they're hardly likely to cause some major headache in the game.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

It's certainly easier to build a 35ft tall siege tower than a 60ft tower. And being able to just teleport to the top in a standing position rather than pulling yourself up would leave yourself less vulnerable. And if scaling ladders don't go all the way to the top they're harder to push off.

Granted, but since 4e's rules don't EVER define any procedure for what constitutes LOS in 3 dimensions we are ALWAYS left with rules interpretation. Its entirely within the letter of the 4e rules for a DM to say that if you can't see the FLOOR of the place you are teleporting, then you can't teleport there and don't have LOS. I think I'd argue against that interpretation in general, but its not inconsistent with the actual rules and procedures of the game.

Really, the more imaginative and disruptive uses of teleport generally are going to require an acquiescent DM at the very least. One who will decide that windows are in advantageous spots and lack too much curtain, that you can see enough through a curtain or a keyhole to qualify as LOS and that the lighting is sufficient when it might well not be, etc. I'm all for players attempting to find clever ways to use powers and DMs to reward them with success if they work at it and try things that are plausible, but that doesn't mean a power like Fey Step has to be interpreted to be a red carpet and that only very elaborate and extensive changes to the world will set things to rights.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Is there anywhere in the 4e rulebooks that say that eladrin toddlers can teleport?

As has been pointed out by others, this has nothing to do with the teleport rules. The same logic permits a message to be carried across an open plain if every character delays until after the previous runner reaches them.

Luckily no one treats D&D's stop-motion combat resolution mechanics (including its action economy) as an actual model of the physics of the gameworld - do they?

I dunno Pem, there seem to be an awful lot of people who were eager to treat 4e's rules as exactly that, a model of the world. The same people often did the same with 3e or even AD&D rules...

 

[Jester David]

Granted, but since 4e's rules don't EVER define any procedure for what constitutes LOS in 3 dimensions we are ALWAYS left with rules interpretation. Its entirely within the letter of the 4e rules for a DM to say that if you can't see the FLOOR of the place you are teleporting, then you can't teleport there and don't have LOS. I think I'd argue against that interpretation in general, but its not inconsistent with the actual rules and procedures of the game.

Really, the more imaginative and disruptive uses of teleport generally are going to require an acquiescent DM at the very least. One who will decide that windows are in advantageous spots and lack too much curtain, that you can see enough through a curtain or a keyhole to qualify as LOS and that the lighting is sufficient when it might well not be, etc. I'm all for players attempting to find clever ways to use powers and DMs to reward them with success if they work at it and try things that are plausible, but that doesn't mean a power like Fey Step has to be interpreted to be a red carpet and that only very elaborate and extensive changes to the world will set things to rights.

But most of what us being discussed here is Worldbuilding, which is the purview of DMs, so their support is implied.

Personally, I'd allow teleporting so long as you can see the square. If you want to teleport into open sir that's fine.

 

[Ahnehnois]

I remember one DM who nearly had a heart attack upon learning that gnomes could cast speak with animals to communicate with burrowing mammals for one minute a day.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

But most of what us being discussed here is Worldbuilding, which is the purview of DMs, so their support is implied.

Personally, I'd allow teleporting so long as you can see the square. If you want to teleport into open sir that's fine.

Yeah, but my point is it is a DM's choice as to how 'disruptive' it has to be. A DM could choose to be relatively strict and Fey Step would have a pretty limited impact on things. He could rule that only extraordinary eladrin even possess that power. He could rule that it doesn't even work when you are in the Feywild (though canon would seem to disagree the fluff certainly would be most consistent with that and its the DM's world, no RULE says things always work the same in every plane of existence). For that matter DMs are always free to impose consequences or whatever. Maybe most eladrin don't use Fey Step because they find it morally offensive, unpleasant, or perhaps it entails a very tiny amount of danger (once in 100,000 times a monster eats you while you jaunt across the Feywild) that wouldn't even make an adventurer blink or require a check, but would still make your average person think twice about using it 50x a day for their whole life. So I'm just saying, its not some sort of issue that has to wreck anyone's game, even if they potentially have issues with it.

And yes, I'd allow someone to teleport into a window or onto a roof as long as they can see 'some part of the cube' that they want to target. The rules just never were unambiguously extended to 3d such that one could say "yes I can Mr DM, its in the rules!"

Honestly I've always been of the school of thought that magic would totally change society in unimaginable ways and D&D is a fantasy, so I'm just going to assume the typical D&D type society somehow falls out of it all and just focus on the specific impacts of actual magic that the PCs and their allies and opponents are using and not worry about if 100 druids could feed the world by casting Plant Growth every 24 hours or whatever. For whatever reason they don't, or can't, or they just don't want to, whatever.