scry, buff, teleport...initiave?

[Kmart Kommando]

Semantically, your quote more seems to indicate that any spells cast before combat (i.e. outside of initiative) never end. :\

ooh, nice. that gets around all the time limits on the Glowing Christmas Light Party of Doom!

 

[VirgilCaine]

First of all, Scry is pretty gimped from previous versions, and there are a fair number of ways around it. Anticipate Teleport (I think that's the name) will lay a nasty surprise for anyone *abusing* this sort of tactic.

Point is, why look to a ruleset to eliminate every possible problem. Rules can't do that, shouldn't do that, and from WotC's past performance, theirs won't.

There's some inherent problems with the idea.

Forbiddance is a permanent spell, and Hallow and Unhallow (w. Dimensional Anchor) can be used for less expensive stopgap measures. Taking up residence in an ancient temple with a still functioning forbiddance spell should be a common idea.

Also,

Areas of strong physical or magical energy may make teleportation more hazardous or even impossible.

Using Control Weather to make storms constantly surround your fortress, or placing it near an active volcano or a dungeon near a tectonic faultline or just putting several Permanenced spells around a lair (permanent Energy Substituted Walls of [Fire/My Element] instead of real walls for a Dragon's lair, for example--or a different energy type, because he can take a lousy 1d4 or 2d4 per round.) should provide some protection against this tactic.

Add in the fact that casting a 1 hour spell to get less than ten minutes of information, when they can in 3.5e notice the sensor much easier, is not the best tradeoff, IMO.

Once you have Greater Teleport and Greater Scrying, the tactic might be effective--if you weren't fighting enemies that would have countermeasures by this point in time.

 

[Infiniti2000]

This has not been my experience with the rule in practice. And since all the mechanics mentioned already used by various spells in 3.0 and 3.5, I guess I'm curious to know exactly which mechanic you'd have problems adjudicating.

I just didn't explain it well, sorry. Consider if the caster said, "I'm teleporting northward 2 1/4 miles." Does he hit a hill or a tree or doesn't he? It's a random guess unless you've loaded a terrain database in your head. Being trapped in the ethereal plane may not be a trivial thing and I personally would hate to leave such a thing up to DM whim.

So the intention is clear, but you're right that -- if this was anything other than a house rule -- more explicit text would be appropriate.

You're providing your house rule to us as a suggestion to use it, right? So, please provide all the explicit text necessary to use your house rule. If anything, this forum proves that such text is required, so I don't see your point as valid that you can hide behind the curtain and not explain how to adjudicate your proposed rule.

 

[Cephid]

"Isn't split ray +2, as well as empowered? How did you manage a 10th-level spell? Greater rod of empowering?"

Actually, I cast it as a level 6 spell!

The empowered split ray disintegrate.
I'm an incantatrix and have arcane thesis:disintegrate. so both meta feats are +1 on most spells and +0 on disintegrate.

I want to get heighten spell so to add +2 DC to a spell would cost me +1 level, or +0 for disintegrate. (is this right?)