High Level Magic (a bit of a mouthful)

[TheVoiceOfReason]

Greetings All!

I've been DMing on-and-off since the release of DnD 3.X (just a player prior that, but not for long) and I'm wondering if i could get a few opinions and/or suggestion from some fellow gamers...

I've just recently started DMing a high level game (took over the DMship at level 13) and i have managed to grossly underestimate the impact of high level magic, specifically that weilded by the PCs on what adventure material is viable. The PCs being able to Greater Teleport, Planeshift, Dominate, etc didn't catch me by surprise, but i didn't expect them to either walk through or skip entirely large amounts of material i've prepared...

Example: It came to pass that the PCs needed to make their way to a city in the far frozen north of the setting. There were few reliable maps of the region, few of which featured the city at all, the city being largely regarded as a mythical place. I had the grand idea that the PCs would at least try to travel there by conventional (or semi-conventional) means, aided by magic, discovering plot devices, meeting nifty NPC, defeating nifty monsters, gorging themselves on treasure and XP, etc, as we'd all had a grand old time doing in lower levels, just with a greater scale, risk and overall epic 'feel'...
But instead of that, the PCs descided to spend masses of time and resources casting divinations and Greater Teleporting to their destination. I knoew spells and psionic powers would play a major part, as they always had done, but i din't know they would be the entirety of that leg of the adventure!

Obviously, i should have planned more thoroughly for such eventualities, and since then i have done just that. However, i'm having alot of difficulty coming up with usable adventure material that isn't either totally wacky, overpowered or the product of rules engineering to prevent circumvention by the PCs...

Is this something that other DMs have had trouble with? Are other Players out there overwhelmed by high level magic/psionics?

HELP!!!

 

[the Jester]

Plan adventures that require these abilities. Maybe there is no way other than divination magic for the pcs to figure out where to go or who the bad guy is. Maybe the place they need to reach is sealed off from normal transport and the only way in is via teleportation magic. Don't fight the fact that the pcs have these abilities; make use of them.

 

[TheVoiceOfReason]

I agree, and thats what i'm having a tad of trouble with, Jester; creating adventures, etc that use and even require their impressive spell-list but aren't too strange (perhapse its simply a matter of individual taste and preference)...

 

[Shieldhaven]

With reference to the scenario you presented, maybe there's a password or something to enter the city safely, and they first have to divine upon and teleport to those NPCs and persuade them to hand over the password.

Warding areas against teleportation is edging the line of "negating the PCs' wifty abilities outright," but maybe there are ward-keys (thank you, Silver Marches supplement) that specifically allow that character to pierce the wards...

I don't particularly have more experience in high-level play, though I hope some of my current campaigns will get there.

Haven

 

[gizmo33]

AFAIK the latest trend in thinking on this subject is summed up by what the Jester says: don't nerf the abilities, find a way to work with them.

IMO that's useful advice and I think you should always consider the capabilities of your PCs (granted - that's hard to do when you're a new DM and the PCs are 13th level). It's no fun to have the Teleport spell and never get the chance to use it for something interesting.

However - it makes no sense to me that a city would be regarded as mythical when any mid level cleric can start getting information on it from the comfort of his home due to some divination spells.

If the campaign world is going to have "near-mythical" places then IMO there have to be ways of supressing the spells that make gathering information and travelling great distances trivial tasks. For example, the city could be sitting on top of a pile of magnetized iron that blocks teleport and some demi-god may have chosen to wipe the records of the city from the "divine records" so that divination reveals nothing. Otherwise, it makes no sense to me that a city would be lost to history and inaccessible unless PCs are the only ones with access to divination and teleport spells.

What DnD could probably use is a set of spells, rules about magnetized iron, etc. that DMs could use for this (in fact, I think D&DG might already have rules for blocking divination). Like traps, magic items, etc. such things should only be used in cases where they make sense. IMO, it's not "rules engineering" that if a warrior NPC is powerful that you make him high level. By the same token, an inaccessible/mysterious city would have those attributes supported by the rules.

 

[TheVoiceOfReason]

True, some more 'mundane' methods of countering magic would be handy... And i agree that the PCs shouldn't be nerfed with any frequency... Anyway, thanks all for the feedback, its been handy! I'll find something for it eventually, i just need to work out how to use high level magic without turning the game into something like a cheese-enduced nightmare...

 

[gizmo33]

Warding areas against teleportation is edging the line of "negating the PCs' wifty abilities outright," but maybe there are ward-keys (thank you, Silver Marches supplement) that specifically allow that character to pierce the wards...

This is what I don't get - and it seems a fairly common idea. What if one of my PC's abilities is "seeing stuff". Doesn't the invisibility spell negate that nifty ability? Now you're making me feel around for stuff instead of just seeing it. Isn't that the same thing as making people walk some place instead of teleporting there?

 

[Piratecat]

Voice, you know what I've found works well? Remembering that everything has consequences, both good and bad. I'm okay with my PCs doing what yours have done, but I try and make sure that they discover that there's a material advantage to be gained if they then backtrack and explore some of the skipped over area.

For instance, I may have a sage who the PCs are going to miss when they teleport to their destination. At that destination, some hint points them to the fact that this sage would be useful. They'll then track the guy down on their own. And hey! Maybe they would have saved time if they had met him en route, and maybe during that lost time their enemies have managed to accomplish a goal.

The trick is not screwing over the players because they're using their abilities; it's in making each choice meaningful, and letting them know that there are tradeoffs and have free rein to pick.

 

[TheVoiceOfReason]

its not just making you walk there, its what happens along the way (or at least thats the idea)... To use a tired old example; the Lord of the Rings would only have been three pages long and a bit naff besides if Gandalf just grabbed Frodo and the ring, then teleported and flew over Mt Doom... Or at least thats my humble opinion... am i making sense?

 

[TheVoiceOfReason]

To Piratecat: Exactly! this is what i've been gunning for, and it seems to work (or so i've convinced myself)... I still find high level magic to be a bit of a beast at times, however (although this is more a matter of personal taste than anything else)