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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Majoru Oakheart" data-source="post: 6153070" data-attributes="member: 5143">I wish I could propose such a mechanic.  I don't know of anything that would have a nearly 100% success rate at getting the fighter to anywhere in the planet(or any other plane of existence) with one standard action that anyone would accept.  My proposal would be to remove the ability from the wizard in order to equalize it.If you absolutely had to add things rather than remove, I think maybe giving the fighter the ability to use scrolls that did most of what the wizard's did and allowed him to write new ones every day might work.  But most people wouldn't accept that as a class feature of a fighter.Also, it isn't so much the probability of success as WHO has narrative control.  If the DM has the ability to easily and nearly 100% of the time stop an ability without players complaining that you are out to get them or having to come up with contrivances in order to prevent something then it isn't so bad."They are trying to escape, I'll just make the Orcs over here move to stop them" is perfectly fine and logical."They are attempting to teleport out of here....ummm, the orc cave has been warded against teleportation to prevent anyone from leaving" seems arbitrary and contrived.OK, first you must win initiative to teleport before battle is joined.  We were walking in a marching order where we were all adjacent.  Our DMs mostly let us touch each other as a free action that could be done out of turn.  Sometimes we'd all have to spend our actions to get into position.  Though the wizard would ready for the moment we were all together.  Sometimes our Wizard would leave without us(or take whoever was next to him) when he realized we were all going to die.  Then he'd hire another adventuring group(our excuse to roll up new characters).All I can tell you is what experience has taught me.  None of these things happen.  At one point when we were playing 3.5e, I was playing in 2 weekly games(about 4 hours a piece) AND running a Living Greyhawk gamesday once a week where we played 3 four hour adventures a week.  About quarterly I was going to a convention where I was playing about 7 four hour slots over the weekend.  We were also playing periodic Living Greyhawk on other days when we had nothing to do.In an average month, I was playing or DMing close to 90 hours of D&D under a stable of 10 or so DMs.  In an average year I'd play with about 60 DMs.  I likely played at a table with at least 100 people a year.  This was over a period of 5 years.  I got to see a LOT of playstyles and personalities.Having said that, I can tell you that the number of times that someone used a silence, dispel magic, or counterspell to stop a spell could be counted on one hand.  It just isn't done.  It wastes your action(which must be readied) 90% of the time(when the enemy spellcaster decides to cast a spell you don't actually want to stop, decides not to cast a spell at all that turn, and so on) so no player or monster is going to take the risk.Sometimes we'd cast a silence on an object and we'd have one of our allies follow the wizard around to try to stop him from casting.  However, casting it directly on the wizard gave them a save that they normally made so no one tried that.  The wizard would often just move out of the area as his move action and cast, making silence mostly ineffective.This is even assuming the monsters have a spellcaster of any kind.  Sure, Orcs might have one...but out of all the adventures I played less than 10% of encounters had a spellcaster amongst the enemy.Sundering says you can only target something someone is wielding.  Most DMs didn't let you target spell components since they were in a pouch you were wearing.  Otherwise it opened up the door to allowing people to sunder armor or belt buckles(and watching enemies trip over their own pants) or any number of other silly things.  Which would only make combats take longer...and almost every DM I knew was looking for ways to make combats take less time, not more.This is the same reason no enemies ever grappled.  After the 10th or 20th time that someone grappling made a combat take an extra 30 minutes, we decided it was a bad idea.  You have no idea how many combats where this happened:"Ok, the enemy has 30 hitpoints.  This should be over quickly.  The barbarian does an average of 40 damage with his attacks and normally hits on a 3 with his first attack.  Alright, the Barbarian....grapples him.  The enemy attempts to escape...needs a natural 23 to succeed..and fails.  The Barbarian continues to grapple him.  The Wizard attacks the grappled enemy with a dagger for 4 points of damage.  The enemy attempts to escape...and fails.  The Barbarian maintains the grapple.  The Cleric his the enemy for 8 damage with a mace.  The enemy attempts to escape...and fails. and so on and so on."After a while we had a discussion where everyone agreed not to grapple because it didn't help anyone.  Most monsters died in 1 or 2 rounds of attacking them.  Each round we were grappling them was a round we weren't attacking them.  So all we were doing was extending combat without any benefit except maybe preventing 1 attack that we could have healed with a cure light wounds wand.  Meanwhile it increased the length of the combats dramatically.It was even worse when the monsters tried to do it:  The orc attempts to grapple the wizard, he doesn't have improved grapple, you get an AOO.  You hit?  His grapple fails.  If he had just attacked you, you'd be unconscious due to the damage he deals.  Why did I make him grapple again?They don't have to come from nowhere.  They could be a returning hunting party or visiting from a nearby tribe or guards that spotted the PCs entering and didn't move to attack since they wanted to trap them in there.  Even if all that sounds contrived, it's easy to just have the Orcs follow the PCs when they run away.  Without the magical power to teleport, most Orcs move the same speed as PCs.  The point is the DM has real options to stop running PCs that work for nearly every type of monster.I was trying to talk generically in terms of "a nasty encounter".  Orcs could be replaced with any other creature.  But let's say they are 3 9th level Fighter Orcs(a EL 11-12 encounter).  This should be an APL+4 encounter against 7th level PCs, called out in the book as nearly guaranteed fatal.  However, if the wizard has a spell that can kill or incapacitate all 3 of them in one action, it's a nearly guaranteed win.  You just target their bad saves and it's nearly guaranteed to succeed as well.Once again, Orcs and Polymorph are both just examples.  Maybe the encounter is against ONE CR 11 creature with bad Fort saves.  It means that the Wizard has just used his Polymorph spell to turn a near guaranteed loss into a joke encounter with one action.My point isn't that Polymorph is the one spell that can get the Wizard out of anything.  It's that there will be at least once spell he has prepared that can.  The likelyhood of this increases each and every level.I was talking about 3.5e when I mentioned concentration checks.  I was talking about all editions at once.  Yes, your spells were disrupted while casting in 2e.  However, you had to have a lower init than the wizard to have a chance to do so, otherwise it was already cast.  Most weapons(if you use speed factors) were so slow that they had almost no chance to attack before a spell went off.  Even then, it required you actually take damage.  That's why stoneskin was up almost all the time on Wizards. See above about my opinion of grapple.  It is also annoying because it skips normal resolution.  Also, he didn't defeat the enemy, he simply incapacitated it until he ended the grapple or his friends kill it while he grapples it.The point is that we have 2 different players playing 2 different games.  Which, to me is no fun.  Especially when those games don't interact.  I remember when we had a Wizard whose entire point was to reduce enemies to 0 Con to kill them.  He's hit, remove 2 Con.  Then the Fighter would hit and do 20 damage, then the Wizard would hit and remove 2 Con.  The enemy ended up at about 1 con and 2 hitpoints before someone got he final blow.  The battle took 3 times as long as it would have if they had both been doing HP damage because neither one was really helping the other kill the enemy(beyond the few HP he lost due to con modifier).However, that's not really about narrative control.  It's just annoying.You are correct but action resolution isn't SCENE resolution.  I can resolve my action to teleport or polymorph in a different method than resolving your sword attack(though I'd prefer not to).  However, if the theme of this scene is "kill these monsters", turning them into bunnies or teleporting away isn't resolving that scene, it's changing it.The fighter can attempt to negotiate or sneak past the enemy but the DM once again has the ability to say no to these things in easy ways(they don't want to talk to you...they attack).  You can't say to a player "Your spell just fails because the enemy wants to fight you".This isn't that bad of an idea.  I kind of like it as an ability.  Though I'm not a fan of abilities which end combat early so I likely wouldn't use it.</blockquote>

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