Actually, there's a lot of satisfaction in a well-executed hit-and-run, welby. Nothing makes characters feel as cool as identifying their objective, then going directly to it, accomplishing it, and getting out cleanly. Hard work and perseverance can make a victory sweet, sure, but there's a special kind of sweetness that you only get from a perfect hit-and-run.
And from a GM's perspective, there's a lot of fun to be had in finding ways to complicate a standard scry-buff-teleport assault. No more messing around with placing mooks and low-threat obstacles, no more worrying about how your BBEG's resources were diverted, drained, or destroyed before the big fight. Just prep and plan for one big, no-holds-barred blowout, and see if the PCs are clever enough to prevail anyway.
The wizard I play in our soon-to-end Scarred Lands campaign got Teleport fairly recently, so we've messed around with trying hit and runs. The most recent one (hitting a Calastian prisoner caravan) was classic, and at the end of the session we were all pretty solidly convinced that we were, at least for the moment, The Coolest People on Ghelspad.
It also helped wash the taste of our previous hit-and-run debacle out of our mouths. That was kind of a low-rent operation (locate object + clairvoyance + dimension door), and while we got what we went in for, it came at a price. The targets managed to get enough warning to prepare a decent reception for us, which was pretty much all our fault. As a result, they prepped the room we came into with invisibility purges and a stack of dispel magic scrolls. And then I made a couple of insanely bad spellcasting choices (casting easily-identifiable signature spells, putting a wall spell up in the wrong place, screwing around with Knock when I should've just dispelled the Dimensional Anchor they slapped on the box with the goodies and run away) on top of that. That was pretty fun, too, as the occasional SNAFU tends to be, but it also made us feel like a party full of screwups and ended up with us getting marked for some serious retribution.
And y'know, at least half of the time I'd be more than willing to trade the arduous journey of figuring out how to get to the bad guy for a hit-and-run of either the "flawless victory" or "insanely bungled" variety. Like Quasqueton's group, this is the first time we've played at a level where we can teleport around, and it's a total blast figuring out how we can best use that ability.
--
it also makes it easier for us to make travel deadlines
ryan
