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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Forrester" data-source="post: 331477" data-attributes="member: 1279">Loki, you know not of what you speak. I'm not playing D&D? You're a nut! Besides, I think you have the wrong impression about the relative power levels of the elves here. Let me spell out the levels of what I'm talking about . . . BEGINNING of Part I of my campaign:1st level party must deal with a 500-elf force that has started to set up shop in the nearby wilderness, which is a pretty expansive area -- 50 miles x 30 miles. The highest level elf they need to deal with was 6th level, and there were only three of these (outpost leaders). 75% of these elves are just 1st level lackeys . . . admittedly, they all have MW armor, and all 3rd+ level elves in this army have MW armor and MW weapons and a "buffing" or healing potion or three. Cheaty elves!The party has aid in the form of a refugee village of kobolds and goblins (that has a scattering of higher-level folks, though nobody over 4th level), and an orc tribe (50 or so orcs) thirty or forty miles away. THEY SURVIVE by using terrorist tactics. They level quickly, and soon the elves can only make sure that their 5-man patrols survive by making them 20-man patrols. The party can avoid these without a whole lot of trouble, when necessary. So while it seems they are dealing with overwhelming odds . . . because I "nerfed" wand creation and because the rules of my world tend to frown on higher level Divinations (no 3rd level elven clerics with scrolls of Commune to use in emergencies), the party survives. And it's still "real" D&D. Trust me.END OF PART I of my campaignThe party, now averaging 6th level, manages to lead the refugee kobolds and goblins en masse through a passage leading into the Underdark. Unfortunately, the orc tribe was wiped out when the party left a couple orc flunky bodies back at an ambush. Speak with Dead + Speak with Plants at the battle site = Elves finding out where the orc tribe was based. This led to some very, very dead orcs, as the tribe was pretty much completely wiped out . . . and a very, very irritated party, who received an object lesson in how irritating even low-level divinations can be. See? I kept some of them around <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />. The party ends up killing an outpost leader, and over 100 elves, in the three months of game time previous to this escape. The elves are PISSED about this, but because their resources are stretched (they're in the middle of a big multi-front war), they can't just bring out an 18th level party to go PC-hunting. Though if they could Scry/Teleport, they probably would; it'd be over with in five minutes. So I "nerf" Scry/Teleport. The party runs, runs, runs into the nassssty Underdark, but the situation is such that the elves cannot pursue immediately, and by the time they can catch up, the party has managed to cover its tracks and escape. (Yay Stone Shape + some extraordinarily heavily bribed xorn!). Once again, after a small "nerfing", it makes logical sense that the party can survive, even though there are higher-level elves on the party's case. To sum up:1) No party is going to be able to survive easily when their opponents are ten levels higher than they are. If the party had really *really* pissed off the elves, they'd be willing to burn a Wish or two to locate them. 2) BUT, with Scry/Teleport out there, no party is going to be able to survive when their opponents are just a LITTLE more powerful than they are, especially if these opponents have many more resources available to them. Barsoom is the one talking about mages popping in to cast Meteor Swarm on up-and-comers. I'm not (though I can see how that might come about, and his campaign sounds very cool!) The power differential I'm talking about here isn't 10th level versus 20th level -- it's 6th vs 9th, or 10th vs 14th. As the DM, you can create a situation where the party's survival is plausible under those circumstances if they don't do anything stupid, even though their foes are more powerful than they are. And you're still playing D&D. But, it seems to me, only if you "nerf" Scry/Teleport first. If you insist that's not D&D . . . you're just wrong.</blockquote>

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