My Fix to Scry-Buff-Teleport

[Nightfall]

Storm and Core are right, scrying takes a focus or a point to focus on. If the party is moving at random, hard to find them without divine or supremely powerful beings involved. As for Teleport, even with Teleporting without error, there's ALWAYS the chance something can go wrong. I mean you are talking about magic that can go around. Magic isn't a science folks, no matter how much people practice it. Stuff CAN and often does go wrong. Make sure you show that in your games. (I know I do when it comes some spells.)

 

[Altalazar]

So basically you have the 1960s star trek transporter.

 

[Nightfall]

Well yeah. But if you have a magical ionosphere similiar to what the Scarred Lands have, you don't want to go more than 500 miles at any jump. So theoratically you could cross a continent, but you're much better of using a Slacerian Gateway since they have more accuracy. IF you can afford it. But that's the Scarred Lands. I don't know about anyone else. Few wizards have much accuracy in teleport IN the plane of the Scarred Lands. Extraplanar teleporting....well might be safer.

 

[Vahktang]

Scry's for a teleport access is not always accurate.
You may go awry once of twice.

Scry comes with a notice ability, I believe. Use that.
That same notice ability could easily be explained for incoming teleports.
If teleport comes in, BBG leaves. Contingency would work real well in this case. Better than 'teleport when I am below 10(?) HP' (which would still work)
Especially if the 'Below 10 HP' went to some place where the party could not teleport to (a comfortable rather small tomb, a potion of gaseous form to escape, or a trap filled room with the low hp BBG safe and watching his enemies be destroyed)
AAMOF, use the last one. If they want to off the BBG in his sleep, the teleport into Glyph/Symbol central, with him out of range/immune, etc.

More later,

Vahktang

 

[Wolffenjugend]

Why don't you just let the party use the scry-buff-teleport tactic a few times to kill their enemies and then have the same happen to them. Fair is fair. After a TPK, the party will get the picture. IMC, wizards rarely seek out instant death spells cuz they know that will invite the DM to respond in kind. Problems only arise with teleport when you let the party use it but you then pull your punches and don't use it on them...

 

[Jeph]

What's wrong with scry-buff-teleport? How does it make the game less fun? How will your players react? Do your players use SBT? Do your bad guys use SBT? On the players? If so, how have they reacted? How do your bad guys react when your players use it?

Just some questions to get you thinking.
--Jeff

PS: I have a hell of a lot of fun with SBT (or rather, commune scry auger buff summon planeshift teleport) in my campaign (from both perspectives), so I'd never nerf it.

 

[Plane Sailing]

So my questions are:
1) Is this enough to deter buff-scry-teleport?
2) Should I up the appearance time to say 1d4+1 rounds?
3) Should I allow the people on the destination end to affect the incoming teleporters with actions other than dispelling? (This could be really nasty.)

IMO it is not enough to deter SBT (BST isn't a great idea since scry has a 1hr casting time and most of the buffs will wear off!)

The main reasons why it won't deter it

a) wait until you can scry them while they are asleep or bathing so they don't have all their gear handy.

b) the ambushers can take enough time to lade on as many buffs as they want, 1 or d4+1 rds isn't enough for the assaulted to buff themselves as much (even if they were aware - see (a))

Your option (3) would work - if the people at the destination can shove some furniture into their arrival point so the teleporters automatically get an initial "Mishap" it means that the attackers would always want to arrive in an empty location, making the whole thing less of a duck shoot for them.

Cheers

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

All you really need to do to make SBT not work is make it known that there are spells to redirect teleportation.

If the PC's think there's a chance of being teleported into a cell (or better yet, the cladera of an active volcano), they'll think better of it.

I believe there's such a spell in one of the Books of Eldritch Might...

 

[Nightfall]

There are a couple teleportation blocking/redirecting spells in BoEM I. I'm sure once The Complete BoEM comes out, they'll be set for 3.5.

 

[Vaxalon]

Why is the blocking of the teleporting such a big deal?

In my view, blocking the SCRYING is the important part! Even if they can only just SEE into the enemy corridors of power, isn't that threat enough?

The SBG has some magical enhancements that can block scrying, plus there are spells that can decieve them.