So, how do you keep'em from just 'porting away?

[LostSoul]

A lot of plots in the genre of high adventure involve characters getting boxed-in or steered into danger. How do you make escape a goal, how do you make players feel hounded and claustrophobic, when players can just go "poof" the first moment they have to huddle together and leave any dire situation miles away?

How do other DM's handle it? Are there any good sources to consult on the topic?

I banned teleport.

In my homebrew world, it didn't fit, so I got rid of it. There were no problems caused there; it's a simple spell that nothing else relies upon (except adventure design). I did it so I wouldn't have to deal with the fact that NPCs enemies, who could kill the PCs using scry-buff-teleport, did nothing but sit in their lairs and plot evilness over cold goblin brains with their evil fiend friends.

Now, if I were to have a game that used teleport...

I guess I would have the NPCs figure out where the PCs are going all the time. Then I would lure them out of their home. I'd send some flunkies into their home, and then attack the PCs, and when they teleport back home they find themselves caught in the many strands of my evil web.

So the players would think, "oh crap, they got their dirty evil hands all over my bed. Guess this place isn't safe to bed down in any more."

I'd have the NPCs use Sendings to taunt the PCs with. (Although in 3.5 that might be a problem?) I'd trick them into taking an amulet of detection (or whatever it's called). Send an animal messenger or a whispering wind. Little stuff like that might freak them out.

I guess I would take away a safe place for the PCs to land (or locating such a place a goal) by having NPCs assault it, and I'd make the NPC's reach so long that the PCs can't go anywhere without falling under its influence.

Hope that was of some use.

Do you have any specific information about your current situation? Might be fun to try and figure out how to hound and harrass PCs, even if they aren't my own.

 

[VirgilCaine]

Similarly, Teleport isn't flawed just because some DM's don't like to deal with it. I don't like beign able to Plane Shift whenever you want, so I nerf it. Because I'm lazy, and I find being able to plane shift only in certain circumstances adds to the dimension of my world. So I nerf it. That doesn't make plane shift flawed in any way, it just means that my needs are different.

Why would you need to nerf Plane Shift--you need a tuning fork of a specific note to go to a specific plane. Sure, you could make an magic tuning fork that changed tune so you can figure out the notes and go wherever you want (and not where you don't want to go)...or the PCs could research it, but...

I like to find ways to create scenarios that represent the unique aspects of high level play. Setting them in very hostile environments, supernatural locations, things like that. I like to find ways to make it distinctive from lower level games. Setting up adventures that would be impossible for a lower level party to do. ...Plus they have to deal with teleporting ambushers during their downtime, like the characters of Charmed have to (I find Charmed to be a good resource to use for designing high level games; the latest Stargate SG 1 seasons is another good example of high-level play.)

Thanks! now I have a reason to watch Charmed and Angel!

The ever-popular Plane of Fire (home to more expansionist/evil creatures than any other plane!)...

 

[Piratecat]

First, just a reminder not to be rude to one another when posting. The thread is back on track, but there was some squabbling earlier that we'd have been better off avoiding. Stay polite, and your point gets through a lot more clearly!

As for me? I love teleport, wind walk, plane shift, and gate. Love 'em. Instead of nerfing them, I embrace them. I use time-based and consequence-based reasons for keeping the PCs in one spot and not trying to escape when the going gets rough. It seems to work pretty well.

 

[Bastoche]

[evil DM on] If they're high level enough for teleport, they're high level enough for raise dead. Kill the wizard [/evil DM off]

 

[Piratecat]

An amusing but slightly off-topic scene from my game not too long ago:

One of the PCs was in Sigil, the city of doors, where there are planar portals all over. An assassin was doing its level best to kill him. He fled one round ahead of the assassin, and managed to make it to a planar portal. He popped through. Snarling with fury, the assassin jumped through the round after him. . .

only to discover that on the other side, the PC had opened up a gate. A gate that was almost flush to the planar portal he had just leapt through. A gate that led to the negative material plane.

Oh.

The PC watched the assassin plunge through into the negative material plane, closed the gate, popped through the planar portal back to Sigil, and walked away whistling.

 

[Aaron L]

That's just nasty goodness.

 

[Orius]

Well, I'd say you're selling a lot of folks short. There are also those who just don't want the campaign to be so super-over-the-top, so devoid of obstacles and hazards that make for interesting plots, that the game consists of little than the scripted hack-n'-spellfests that this Tactics in Action article is representative of.

Sometimes that's true, but often it forces them to be resourceful rather than addressing every problem with a spell. It's fine to say high-level play works differently, but that doesn't mean it should work the way it tends to.

Yes, that's assuming that a high-level game consists of nothing more than PCs facing foes of increasingly higher-level foes. You're essentially taking the "hack-n'-spellfast" that represents a single encounter and magnifying it to represent an entire campaign. Perhaps that might be true if high-level PCs went and camped out on the planes duking it out with hordes of fiends and did nothing else. Would I want to see the players fight hundered of battles on their own Material Plane with hordes of CR 10+ creatures? No, not unless this was a world that be in it's very scope was massively epic in natute.

Besides, as others have said, trying to shoehorn "obstacles and hazards" that would stymie low level PCs doesn't work with higher level PCs. It's one thing to occasionaly have situations where some spells don't work as expected or at all is one thing, having this as a blanket effect over the entire campaign is another. Simply nerfing the PC's abilites all the time or outright stripping them of abilities the DM doesn't feel like working around is cheap, and an easy way out for the DM.

 

[Orius]

As for me? I love teleport, wind walk, plane shift, and gate. Love 'em. Instead of nerfing them, I embrace them. I use time-based and consequence-based reasons for keeping the PCs in one spot and not trying to escape when the going gets rough. It seems to work pretty well.

P-kitty makes a good point. Felon, you say you want to make the PCs feel restricted and constrained. Sure, you could always block the use of teleport and keep those restrains purely physical. But placing time or consequential limits on the PCs can also constrain them, but in different ways. If for example, they only have a certain amount of time to complete a certain objective, then it lessens the leisure to teleport to and from a home base at will. Or take into account teleport's range. Perhaps instead of banning teleport, approach it from the angle that the PCs have to teleport to complete the object within a given timeframe because they have a lot of ground to cover.