Wulf's Collected Story Hour -- FINAL UPDATE 12/25

[Piratecat]

The "solution" I plan for my campaign is a different, slight change to teleport (which I've seen mentioned by someone on ENworld, but I don't know who).

Teleport routes people through the timeless astral plane and this makes all current spell durations expire.

Hey, wait a sec! If you're going to nerf the players, you should do it using valid game mechanics! Because the astral plane is timeless, that would mean that spell effects there never wear off; in earlier editions, a potion drank before entering the astral would just keep on affecting you the whole time you were there. As a result, the logic for stripping them from spells is a little iffy.

I'm not sure I like this deux ex machina anyways, but when I first read it my inner game geek kicked in.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Hey, wait a sec! If you're going to nerf the players, you should do it using valid game mechanics!

Well, yeah, I know that isn't what timeless means. I'll come up with a different rationale (e.g. crossing the boundary between the material and the astral causes spell effects to expire). The thread I started in the Rules section has thrown up some very useful ideas for other ways to handle it. One of the particularly interesting tactic-nerfing ones is to rule that Teleport takes a minute (or more) of actual time to accomplish while appearing instantaneous to the teleportees. This gives some purpose to the teleport trace psionic power, allows scried targets some vital time to prepare a reception committee and so forth.

Another useful observation within the basic rules revolves around deciding just how good a picture you can get through scry. In most cases a scry viewing would count as "viewed once" (since "seen casually" requires that you have seen it more than once). At least this would give a 25% chance of B-S-T not arriving at the correct location. In earlier editions a teleport mishap was fatal, and happened more frequently. That plus the less impact of buffs meant this tactic didn't really happen in earlier editions.


The truth is, I'm more concerned about nerfing intelligent villians than the PC's though... Since if this tactic is a workable one it would be difficult to stop BBEGs from killing the characters.

 

[Lord Pendragon]

If this doesn't make sense or has already been said, please disregard.

Assuming that the party has a wizard/sorcerer who can cast Teleport means the villain is at an equal or higher level, right? So the villain most likely can either teleport themselves, or hire a wizard to do so. Party teleports in, villain (having sensed the scrying) teleports out. No biggie, AFAIK...

 

[coyote6]

Assuming that the PC cleric didn't "ready to cast dimensional anchor on the evil wizard as soon as I see him", and nail the EW before he could teleport away, the villain has just abandoned his base, and all captives, minions, and magic items that he didn't take to the bathroom with him.

Because you know that's when the PCs will attack.

Plus, you've just required that all your villains be wizards, outsiders that can teleport, or evil clerics with secret sanctums (that they can word of recall to). No evil fighter lords, no vile blackguards, no grandfather assassins, no masters of the thieves' guild, none of that, not without having a 9th level hireling wizard tied to 'em, just in case they have to flee before the wrath of the PCs. Anybody who can't teleport, dies.

And, again, the real problem is that the PCs higher level wizard enemy should just do it to the PCs first. The game becomes a contest of who can scry & teleport first, or an unending series of exchanges of such, as one side escapes, has its dead members returned to life, and performs a retributive scry-teleport-kill. Bor-ring.

Wuuuuuuuuuuuuuulf! Post, quick!

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

I will post today or tomorrow. I spent a little time this weekend trying to figure out how to edit down the remaining content-- which is largely pages and pages of high-level combat-- and wrap it all up.

There are some good nuggets of humor in there I want to get to. I particularly enjoy it when Shorty taunts the paladin.


Wulf

 

[Nail]

Anybody who can't teleport, dies.

Yup.

As Wulf's story-hour teaches us, young one......

 

[Destil]

Persistant Spell

I've also always hated persistant spell. Aside from the fact that it disreguards the original spell duration, it's also just the most stupidly balanced, hacky feat out there with it's range limits. I really dislike the idea the a custom, personal-range haste variant, for instance, would be better in any way because it's more limited (personal range). Bad design through and through.

In my game persistant is a +2 feat, and lets the spell automaticaly re-activate once 1d4 rounds after being dispeled.

 

[Piratecat]

Well, yeah, I know that isn't what timeless means. I'll come up with a different rationale (e.g. crossing the boundary between the material and the astral causes spell effects to expire).

Hmmmm. Hopefully, this only happens with teleport, and not dimension door or - lord forbid - plane shift/astral spell.

One of the particularly interesting tactic-nerfing ones is to rule that Teleport takes a minute (or more) of actual time to accomplish while appearing instantaneous to the teleportees. This gives some purpose to the teleport trace psionic power, allows scried targets some vital time to prepare a reception committee and so forth.

This does remove the standard tactic of teleporting across the battlefield when you've run out of dimension doors. Interesting idea, though.

Truth is, I'd be more supportive, but I just paid someone a couple of hundred dollars to have all of my comics sterilized.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Hmmmm. Hopefully, this only happens with teleport, and not dimension door or - lord forbid - plane shift/astral spell.

Dimension door is OK because of its relatively short range, plane shift takes you to a random location on another world and astral spell IS 9th level after all... so I don't think I'd bother with changing them.

One interesting possibility (thinking along the lines of teleport being an improved Dim Door) would be to allow the teleporter to choose whether to arrive instantly and be disorientated like Dim Door, or to accept the time delay but arrive fully compos mentis.

Truth is, I'd be more supportive, but I just paid someone a couple of hundred dollars to have all of my comics sterilized.

Hey! Drool dries transparent, you know!

Cheers

 

[Nail]

Dimension door is OK because of its relatively short range, plane shift takes you to a random location on another world and astral spell IS 9th level after all... so I don't think I'd bother with changing them.

Plane, I think you missed the point here.

As Dimension Door, Teleport, and plane shift all use the same mechanic to cross space quickly, it makes little sense to have the results of that shift affect in-place spells differently.

IOW, be consistant with your plane-traveling effects, or you lose versimilitude for your sharper players.

...and all yer players are sharp, right?