House Rules

[Celebrim]

How would any business prevent themselves being robbed blind by eladrin rogues? Locks and barred gates would go from being the standard defensive measure to completely useless. Castles would be built with 25ft thick walls to prevent any eladrins just stepping past them. Prison cells would (presumably) have to be underground to prevent fey-stepping out of them (if the teleport is flavoured as stepping into the feywild and out again somewhere else).

I certainly won't be introducing them but were there Eladrin in my world they would be viewed as inherently uncanny, unnatural, and untrustworthy by all the other races. The economic burden imposed by Eladrin would simply be too high to deal with. Rather than spend enomormous sums of money Eladrin proofing society, the majority of societies would take a far simplier approach. In most areas they would be killed on sight, and in the rest of the areas they would killed for spitting on the sidewalk and if some excuse could not be found, then they'd encouraged politely but forcefully to leave. An Eladrin walking into town would prompt women to take thier children inside and men to grab thier weapons. Any one associating with an Eladrin would be presumed a fiend or an associate with fiends and would be treated as a blackgaurd or witch.

That is I think the far more logical socialogical adaptation to the presence of a teleporting race than trying to figure out how to make your society work with them.

 

[Lacyon]

I certainly won't be introducing them but were there Eladrin in my world they would be viewed as inherently uncanny, unnatural, and untrustworthy by all the other races. The economic burden imposed by Eladrin would simply be too high to deal with. Rather than spend enomormous sums of money Eladrin proofing society, the majority of societies would take a far simplier approach. In most areas they would be killed on sight, and in the rest of the areas they would killed for spitting on the sidewalk and if some excuse could not be found, then they'd encouraged politely but forcefully to leave. An Eladrin walking into town would prompt women to take thier children inside and men to grab thier weapons. Any one associating with an Eladrin would be presumed a fiend or an associate with fiends and would be treated as a blackgaurd or witch.

That is I think the far more logical socialogical adaptation to the presence of a teleporting race than trying to figure out how to make your society work with them.

Yoink.

(Thanks, Celebrim)

 

[beverson]

Or maybe, just maybe, the Eladrin teleport requires line of sight to the destination, or some other restriction that would prevent just bamfing through a wall. We just don't know yet. Hopefully someone who gets another chance to peek into the PHB will be able to look up that particular racial power and solve the question for us.

 

[lutecius]

Basically as centre-of-all said, and more.

When eladrin are a core race, and thus as relatively common as any other race...

How would any business prevent themselves being robbed blind by eladrin rogues? Locks and barred gates would go from being the standard defensive measure to completely useless. Castles would be built with 25ft thick walls to prevent any eladrins just stepping past them. Prison cells would (presumably) have to be underground to prevent fey-stepping out of them (if the teleport is flavoured as stepping into the feywild and out again somewhere else).

All kind of world-related changes could be made as logical counters to the problem, but then you've got to think of them all and make them, and it drags everything away from the 'standard' fantasy world that underlies most settings at low level IMO.

First level characters teleporting around sure won't fit every campaign's flavour but the most obvious solution to eladrin thieves would be rituals

Seriously, if Feystep's implications aren't clarified in the book, you could make protection against it basic folk knowledge, like "a horseshoe hung on your door keeps them nasty fairies at bay". Or decide that cold iron shackles prevent eladrins from teleporting. This would fit flavor-wise and wouldn't lead to power escalation.
At any rate, you shouldn't nerf feystep in combat, i think that's all they were thinking about when they designed it.
.

 

[Odysseus]

Basically as centre-of-all said, and more.

When eladrin are a core race, and thus as relatively common as any other race...

How would any business prevent themselves being robbed blind by eladrin rogues? Locks and barred gates would go from being the standard defensive measure to completely useless. Castles would be built with 25ft thick walls to prevent any eladrins just stepping past them. Prison cells would (presumably) have to be underground to prevent fey-stepping out of them (if the teleport is flavoured as stepping into the feywild and out again somewhere else).

All kind of world-related changes could be made as logical counters to the problem, but then you've got to think of them all and make them, and it drags everything away from the 'standard' fantasy world that underlies most settings at low level IMO.

I'd be tempted to allow all Eladrin to sense places where you can step between the real and the feywild (which would be a great plot and adventure device) and then allow a racial feat to be picked up at higher level to enable the teleport ever 5 minutes thing.

Cheers

I Dm's my first 4E game last night. I restricted the Eladrin teleport to line of sight. Which made the abilty reasonable. However the feel of the abilty was all wrong. I felt is if the monster we're going up against the X-men , not a party of adventurers.

 

[hong]

Basically as centre-of-all said, and more.

When eladrin are a core race, and thus as relatively common as any other race...

I don't see why "core race" has to mean "as common as any other race". It just means that eladrin can be used as PCs, and can thus be protagonists. The average eladrin might live their entire life hugging trees in the Feywild; on the Prime, an eladrin might just be a funny-looking elf to most people.

 

[KarinsDad]

I actually have my house rule document written (at least for what I have found so far) and it basically boils down to two things:

1) Using hexes (and rules for doing so).

2) Lowering the steep curve of magic item cost and wealth by encounter (a campaign pet peeve of mine since 1E).

Every other house rule that I thought I was going to use for 4E, I've put on hold until I see how the game system works because I'm seeing the synergy of other rules that make those house rules no better (and sometimes worse) than the core rules. I'm sure I'll adjust some of the editting errors that other people find as well.