Say goodbye to Scry 'n die

[Killer Angel]

My DM in our current Pathfinder's campaign (serpent's skull) introduced these house rules:
1 - all the scrying-type spells don't exist
2 - all the high level teleport spells don't exist (monsters' SLA abilities will be replaced by something else). Dimension door still works, but only with LoS.
The main reason for this is (DM's words): "with this kind of spells, at mid-high level, D&D becomes SWAT in the middle age and I don't like it".
It makes sense, 'specially for the campaign, and I don't want to debate this decision, but I was wondering: do some of you already tried something similar? how much this nerf can have an impact on the effective tier/power of casters?
The offensive potential will certainly be reduced (as the title says, no more scry 'n die), but also the defensive side will be harmed. No more safe-life spells, as word of recall, contingencied teleport, dimension door out of the sealed chamber, and so on.
Would you play (or master) with such a rule? Do you find it a challenging limitation or a merely annoying inconvenience? In what way would you work around it?

[sonofzeal]

I'm currently DMing a game with a rather peculiar setting. Here's a quote from the thread:


SPECIFIC WARNINGS/RESTRICTIONS
The cosmology here has little in common with traditional D&D cosmology. Thus, effects that interact with other dimensional space, other planes, or the residence thereof will generally not work - or at least, not the way you expect. This includes all spells with the "teleportation", "calling", or "shadow" subtypes, as well as anything specifically extradimensional such as Magnificent Mansion or Rope Trick. Divination spells such as "Contact Other Plane" or "Commune" are likewise unreliable at best; there are no gods, and beings from other planes are most definitely not your friends.

So yes, I'd play with that; I'm practically running the same thing as we speak, only more so!

[JackRackham]

Nerfs as limited as these don't really affect the tier system. There are just a million things full casters can do that melee can't touch.

This is effective, however, at establishing a certain feel for a world and at maintaining verisimilitude in a campaign with high-level casters as NPCs. After all, why wouldn't the BBEG just scry-and-die the party otherwise (there are a million ways to justify not taking this tack, but still).

I'm doing something similar in an upcoming campaign. I'll be banning long-distance teleportation spells and plane-shift outright and probably nerfing fly. Why? Because I want faraway lands to be strange, mysterious and exotic without breaking common sense and because I have restructured the planes in my world to allow for overland travel to and between planes. If the PCs want to go to another plane, I want them to actually experience travel in the ethereal and other planes (the ethereal works like an amalgamation of the ethereal, shadow and astral planes, in my world. It coexists and shadows all other planes. Where the planar fabric is at its thinnest there are tears.).

I haven't seen how this will work, but I don't anticipate problems.

[Coidzor]

I'm currently DMing a game with a rather peculiar setting. Here's a quote from the thread:



So yes, I'd play with that; I'm practically running the same thing as we speak, only more so!

...Why would you ban bags of holding? :smallconfused:

I've considered having planar travel banned or otherwise hobbled in some manner in the setting I'd been working on that was set in a between place between a few of the elemental planes.

Never really had a problem with teleportation at high levels, I must admit, so while I might bump it up a level, I don't really see myself banning it.

Really though, I see myself much more likely to establish a sort of E8 style of game until the players get past a certain point, at which they'd then get to start leveling again until, say, 14-16, and then I'd have to come up with my own spin on epic games for when 20th level got on the table.

I'm not quite sure how I'd alter it so that I didn't have only the gentlemen's agreement to fall back on, but I don't really wanna get rid of scrying type effects either.

[Killer Angel]

So yes, I'd play with that; I'm practically running the same thing as we speak, only more so!

High level divination are still undefined... I'll ask clarifications.


Nerfs as limited as these don't really affect the tier system. There are just a million things full casters can do that melee can't touch.


I can give you that tiers won't be affected, but the amount of caster's versatility certainly will.

[sonofzeal]

...Why would you ban bags of holding? :smallconfused:
I also gave each player a bonus free Handy Haversack, which bypasses the exemption. And really, a single Handy Haversack should be enough for most purposes.

[Keneth]

Except for carrying around your wealth. It's the golden elephant in the room that no one likes to talk about but a haversack is nowhere near enough to carrying around all your gold at mid to high levels. :smallbiggrin:

[sonofzeal]

Except for carrying around your wealth. It's the golden elephant in the room that no one likes to talk about but a haversack is nowhere near enough to carrying around all your gold at mid to high levels. :smallbiggrin:
Eh, a single diamond can be worth up to 8000 gp, and has no listed weight but probably isn't even all that big or heavy. I tend to assume high level adventurers are working in precious trade goods rather than piles and piles of coins.

[Coidzor]

I can give you that tiers won't be affected, but the amount of caster's versatility certainly will.

Casters' ability to take control of the pacing of the game away from the antagonist NPCs to a certain extent no longer being quite so readily available (one would actually have to establish or otherwise tap into things like spy networks and so on to get information) seems to be more a consequence than the actual versatility of casters.

Being able to always predict the best solution to an upcoming problem isn't a requirement of versatility, after all.

[Keneth]

Eh, a single diamond can be worth up to 8000 gp, and has no listed weight but probably isn't even all that big or heavy. I tend to assume high level adventurers are working in precious trade goods rather than piles and piles of coins. That depends on the campaign. If there's plenty of gems around and if they're readily accepted as currency and if the characters aren't required to appraise their value every time, then that's convenient. Our campaigns sadly don't work that way, so having some extradimensional help to carry around all of those golden bricks is a given.

[IncoherentEssay]

I use something similar when i DM:
-divinations do not count for familiarity for teleportation (having a feel for the local weave is part of the familiarity deal, and existing divinations cannot convey this information.)
-to get better than "seen once" odds for teleport, you need to be teleporting into a prepared teleportation circle. Quality of teleportation depends on quality of circle (spellcraft).

I have also considered bumping the cast time to 1 full round to make it less of an easy getaway card, and applying a 2-3 round "teleportation sickness" nauseated condition on arrival to remove the final precision strike element (immunities do not apply to 'port-sickness).

[sonofzeal]

That depends on the campaign. If there's plenty of gems around and if they're readily accepted as currency and if the characters aren't required to appraise their value every time, then that's convenient. Our campaigns sadly don't work that way, so having some extradimensional help to carry around all of those golden bricks is a given.
Eh, makes more sense than gold. You think people regularly pay 120 pounds of gold for a half-decent magic sword? And heck, you'd have all the same problems authenticating the gold as you would the gems. And the same problems with quantity available, and with universality. There is literally no way I can think of in which gold makes more sense as a currency, on the scale D&D generally presumes.

Mostly we just ignore the whole issue and don't look too closely. But beyond that, we can usually presume whatever society we're in has a solution that doesn't involve metric tonnes of gold all over the place. Gems make a nice convenient one; they can get tagged with Arcane Mark to be easily identifiable. Some 2000 gp gems, some 10000 gp gems, and you've gone a long way towards things making a heck of a lot more sense.

[Keneth]

Eh, makes more sense than gold. You think people regularly pay 120 pounds of gold for a half-decent magic sword? And heck, you'd have all the same problems authenticating the gold as you would the gems. And the same problems with quantity available, and with universality. There is literally no way I can think of in which gold makes more sense as a currency, on the scale D&D generally presumes. I think people don't regularly buy "half-decent magic swords". I also think the whole magic item prices and adventurer wealth is skewered beyond any reason. So no, it doesn't make any sense, I always imagine using a crane to deliver a huge chest filled with valuables at the vendor. :smallbiggrin: I can't agree on identification and quantity though, gold is much simpler to identify and appraise, and a lot more common than most precious minerals of any significant worth.

To make a somewhat more on-topic contribution:

Our own homebrewed system included similar restrictions. All long range teleportation spells were removed and such movement was restricted to moving to or through existing teleportation circles. I've created a more complex version of the 4E ritual system that allowed, among other things, to perform teleportation rituals which took at least 1 minute to complete. This prevented any abuse in combat (unless you managed to hold everyone off for a full minute -- it has happened) and any surprise attacks that might have otherwise been possible through divinations (since you needed a circle at your destination).

Divinations themselves weren't particularly nerfed, mostly because no one abused them but even if someone wanted to, our DM wouldn't let them (he'd quickly turn it against us).

[Ashtagon]

I've flat out banned any divination that relies on contacting an outsider for advice, or that relies on an external sensor (scry spells).

Teleport puts the traveller through the far realm rather than the astral, and so is far from safe. The severity of the effects increase with distance, but at the very least you can expect to lose a significant number of spells memorised, psi power points, psi focus, or whatever. Plus everyone arrives disoriented and nauseous. You want to be really sure the destination is safe.

Oh, and teleport takes a full minute to cast.

[The Glyphstone]

My world, if I ever finish it, has 'nodes' of teleportation along ley lines or something - a Teleport spell can only bring you from one node to another node it's connected to, and the 'node network' isn't necessarily unified world-wide, since they need occasional maintenance to keep them functional and safe to visit. Greater Teleport can bring you from anywhere in the world to any node.

[Roderick_BR]

My group never used it at all, so no difference to me. No one plays high level wizard with a million contingency plans. The only single time was when my wizard used a teleport (from a staff) to escape a trap/monster hiddled cave after the group got the treasure. Funny thing, I was not there that day and the group was playing him.

You could keep some artifacts and deities (with a few seers) with the divination abilities, but nothing that could be mobile or effective in combat. For example, some sort of fountain that can show distant places after the use of a ritual (like in that movie), but that won't allow easy teleport access to it, either in or out.

Powerful teleport spells would require long time casting, useful for travel only, not instant combat position.

[Killer Angel]

Apparently, the nerfing of teleport was more common than I thought. :smallsmile:



Powerful teleport spells would require long time casting, useful for travel only, not instant combat position.

Even that could be annoying (from the DM PoV), if the campaign revolves also around jungle long distance explorations. Even if used only to come back home, buy some stuff and then again at your camp, it can break the feeling and the spirit of the adventure.

[Yora]

Eh, makes more sense than gold. You think people regularly pay 120 pounds of gold for a half-decent magic sword?
That's not actually that much, just about five of these:
http://www.goldmoney.com/images/bars/400oz-gold-bar-hands.jpg
But a +2 weapon would be 8,400 gp, or 160 pounds of gold, or seven 400 ounce gold bars.

But it's one of the reasons I don't allow extradimensional spaces. You can't just wander the countryside with your entire vault in your pocket.

[Aotrs Commander]

When running my own worlds, I generally work on the basis that teleporting and scrying is either sufficiently common (in relative terms) that all important structures are both scry-and teleport- warded, or that there are certainly limitations to both. (For example, x feet of solid material blocks the spell(s) - giving a good reason why you build a dungeon...)

My PCs fortunately don't often try with scry-and-die - but some of that is a gentleman's agreement, though more backed with fear that if they do, I do, and being scry-or-die by the BBEG and his top minions is not a nice way to end the adventure...!

Scrying and teleportation are part of what I call the "story-breaking" spells (Remove Disease is actually another). Things that let the PCs remove large portions of the story (especially because the journey is part of the adventure.) As I am a heavy-prep DM, I feel the need to at least tone down those elements, so we don't "waste" any quest. I try to limit the use of both, scrying especially (I work on the basis scrying is like ECM, there are counter measures and it gest complicated). Teleportation, on the other hand, I tend to assign to more of a plot device, which require rituals or huge amounts of effort to do correctly.

[sonofzeal]

That's not actually that much, just about five of these:
http://www.goldmoney.com/images/bars/400oz-gold-bar-hands.jpg
But a +2 weapon would be 8,400 gp, or 160 pounds of gold, or seven 400 ounce gold bars.
Gold is incredibly heavy for its size. "Not actually that much" is around what a fully grown adult might weigh. That's hardly something to be scoffed at. And it's still only looking at +2 swords, not even close to the big ticket items.

Heck, even a Handy Haversack, the cheapest common form of extra-dimensional storage, is worth 40 lb of gold. I don't know about you, but I can't imagine carrying around 40 lb of gold in my back pocket.

The only remotely logical way to handle it is to assume that most of that wealth is in more portable items, and thankfully the DMG gives us list prices on various types of gems. Any society that has magic item shops, even if they're not full Magic Mart, would need a system like that. And since it really doesn't change anything in the game except the portability of wealth, I usually take it as a safe assumption.

[Swooper]

One of the games I'm in only allows teleportation between teleport circles, which take an hour, 100gp of materials and a casting of teleport to create. To teleport to a circle, you also need to know the password of that circle. The actual teleportation takes only a standard action to perform, though.

We're still getting scry&die'd now and then by devils with greater teleport SLAs, though. Sort of the DM abusing a loophole in his own houserule. :smallsigh:

Another game I'm in uses the (quite excellent) Vancian-to-Psionic (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=194002) variant, which changes teleport to have a 1 minute casting time, so you can't use it as a getaway car. It doesn't really deter S&D tactics though, in fact, there's a metamagic feat called "Scry and Die" that lets you cast spells through a scrying sensor... :smalleek:

[Need_A_Life]

My DM in our current Pathfinder's campaign (serpent's skull) introduced these house rules:
1 - all the scrying-type spells don't exist
2 - all the high level teleport spells don't exist (monsters' SLA abilities will be replaced by something else). Dimension door still works, but only with LoS.
The main reason for this is (DM's words): "with this kind of spells, at mid-high level, D&D becomes SWAT in the middle age and I don't like it".
It makes sense, 'specially for the campaign, and I don't want to debate this decision, but I was wondering: do some of you already tried something similar? how much this nerf can have an impact on the effective tier/power of casters?
The offensive potential will certainly be reduced (as the title says, no more scry 'n die), but also the defensive side will be harmed. No more safe-life spells, as word of recall, contingencied teleport, dimension door out of the sealed chamber, and so on.
Would you play (or master) with such a rule? Do you find it a challenging limitation or a merely annoying inconvenience? In what way would you work around it?

I've played in a game like this and, while we all accepted it, it rapidly seemed to be an excuse for 'otherwise you won't have random encounters' or 'that way every single NPC won't have permanencied mind blank' :smallsigh:

It wasn't as though we actually did Scry'n'die, anyhow, just used it to skip travel times/escape from combat/deal with locked doors/battlefield control... then again, none of us ever really cared too much about Divination spells over level 2.

[Yora]

At certain levels, I think it becomes a good idea to more often say "And they traveled for two weeks without encountering something that would be worth mentioning regarding their power". All kinds of stories skip long periods of nothing interesting happening all the time, so no need to stick to playing out every situation in the campaign.
As low-level character, traveling through the wildernes is potentially dangerous and when you run into something, it can be a really serious problem. But as you don't mention bathroom brakes, you don't really have to mention chassing off wolves and killing three ogres for a party of 15th level characters.

[Greenish]

Do you find it a challenging limitation or a merely annoying inconvenience?Well, if the adventure includes lots of traveling through featureless plains with random encounters popping up every now and then for no other reason than being random, you'll soon get annoyed that you couldn't just teleport to where you were going. That'd be more poor DMing than anything, though, and disallowing some story-breaker powers (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StoryBreakerPower) can allow you to tell stories they'd otherwise break.

Those aren't so bad limitations, though the swallowed-whole mage in the tyrannosaurus's stomach may disagree with me when her Dimension Door fails due to lack of LoS. :smalltongue:


In what way would you work around it?Wind Walk still works for trivializing long-distance travel, is the first thing I'll note.


...Why would you ban bags of holding? :smallconfused:Bags of Holding aren't extradimensional spaces, but nondimensional, and thus work. :smalltongue:

[Metahuman1]

My personal advice on Teleportation is not to ban it outright, but to give it additional Cost. An XP Component is usually a powerful Incentive not to use it Frivolously or for Random Shopping Sprees in the middle of infiltration of the evil wizards base, but keeps the option of teleporting the heck out of there on the table if the Party somehow get's into a fight they can't win and needs to get far away very fast or die.

[Tyndmyr]

My DM in our current Pathfinder's campaign (serpent's skull) introduced these house rules:
1 - all the scrying-type spells don't exist
2 - all the high level teleport spells don't exist (monsters' SLA abilities will be replaced by something else). Dimension door still works, but only with LoS.
The main reason for this is (DM's words): "with this kind of spells, at mid-high level, D&D becomes SWAT in the middle age and I don't like it".
It makes sense, 'specially for the campaign, and I don't want to debate this decision, but I was wondering: do some of you already tried something similar? how much this nerf can have an impact on the effective tier/power of casters?
The offensive potential will certainly be reduced (as the title says, no more scry 'n die), but also the defensive side will be harmed. No more safe-life spells, as word of recall, contingencied teleport, dimension door out of the sealed chamber, and so on.
Would you play (or master) with such a rule? Do you find it a challenging limitation or a merely annoying inconvenience? In what way would you work around it?

Meh. You can still do some crazy things as a caster. Divination is still a school, right? You still have spells like Legend Lore?

[Killer Angel]

Gold is incredibly heavy for its size. "Not actually that much" is around what a fully grown adult might weigh. That's hardly something to be scoffed at. And it's still only looking at +2 swords, not even close to the big ticket items.

Heck, even a Handy Haversack, the cheapest common form of extra-dimensional storage, is worth 40 lb of gold. I don't know about you, but I can't imagine carrying around 40 lb of gold in my back pocket.


That's true, but if we wanna go into this level of realism, I suppose from that point on, someone will "invent" bills of exchange.
After that, forgery will heavily enter in play... and then I can see specialized rogues with UMD and Guidance of the Avatar, countered by diviners at the service of some Eberron House, and so on with the power race (and the thread derailment :smalltongue:).

[Tyndmyr]

Also, there's platinum and gems. These have some pretty solid basis as a medium of exchange.

[Slipperychicken]

I've heard of, but not seen implemented, the idea of using bank notes as light currency. Has the added bonus of being the proven, real-life solution to this issue :smallamused:

Teleportation can be useful when your DM's lazy enough that pretty much all travel is instantaneous and uneventful anyway :smallannoyed:


EDIT: Swordsage'd on bank notes. I would think there's some kind of magical authentication, really long PIN, and/or powerful Divination worked out. Plus the Magic Mart defenses turned up to 11.

[Killer Angel]

Meh. You can still do some crazy things as a caster. Divination is still a school, right? You still have spells like Legend Lore?

I still don't know, we're only lev. 4, so I had to ask.
But that said, Legend and Lore does different things than prying eyes: I believe rogues, rangers (or druid :smallcool:) and so on, will shine for scouting.

[ShriekingDrake]

I wonder how all these interpretations might looks at spells like Master Earth, which have a similar effect but are not teleportation spells.

[horseboy]

Also, there's platinum and gems. These have some pretty solid basis as a medium of exchange.

Platinum wasn't considered a "Precious" metal until the industrial era. It was considered "spoiled" silver and worthless.

But to the main topic, most of the systems I play in don't have teleportation, and divinizations take days/weeks to do, so don't really happen that often outside of down time.

[bloodtide]

Would you play (or master) with such a rule? Do you find it a challenging limitation or a merely annoying inconvenience? In what way would you work around it?

I guess I'm one of the few DM's that goes for the other route. I'm more then willing to let divination and teleports and such be used. But I don't go with the idea that the world was created yesterday. My campaign world has been around for roughly 10,000 years. So it's safe to say that at least one spellcaster in that time has thought about this problem and created spells, magic items or even creatures to cloud, defeat, mislead or even nullify any problem effects.

D&D presents an action adventure game where your fighting monsters and exploring and such. No one sat down and tried to make it a fully function world. The Core rules are not full of 'common sense' type magic, they are full of adventuring type magic.

So my world is full of such things, both mundane and magic ways to handle the so called problem spells. And like anything, it's an on going process.

[Tyndmyr]

Platinum wasn't considered a "Precious" metal until the industrial era. It was considered "spoiled" silver and worthless.

But to the main topic, most of the systems I play in don't have teleportation, and divinizations take days/weeks to do, so don't really happen that often outside of down time.

Solid as "in fantasy worlds, specifically D&D". Aluminum would be a better historical example of an ultra precious metal.

Meh, take your pick depending on what style you prefer.

[Aotrs Commander]

Gold is incredibly heavy for its size. "Not actually that much" is around what a fully grown adult might weigh. That's hardly something to be scoffed at. And it's still only looking at +2 swords, not even close to the big ticket items.

Heck, even a Handy Haversack, the cheapest common form of extra-dimensional storage, is worth 40 lb of gold. I don't know about you, but I can't imagine carrying around 40 lb of gold in my back pocket.

The only remotely logical way to handle it is to assume that most of that wealth is in more portable items, and thankfully the DMG gives us list prices on various types of gems. Any society that has magic item shops, even if they're not full Magic Mart, would need a system like that. And since it really doesn't change anything in the game except the portability of wealth, I usually take it as a safe assumption.

[side track]Of course, coins probably shouldn't be made of the pure base metal (and D&D is a bit leery on the weight of coincs at that.) For comparison, Roman coinage was something like 70-125 coins to the pound (size and denomination depending), though some of the early sestertius (which was brass, and the "standard", probably best equated to a gp in D&D) were up to 20 to a pound, though those were exceptional (and something like the old British 50p piece - largest but not necessarily the most valuable). Actually, it is probably more useful to compare the sestertius to the sort of use of the current pound coin - you use it a lot, but you have notes for bigger amounts (or in the Romans case, the silver denarius (worth 4 sesterius (roughly, period depending) and the gold aureus (worth 100 sesterius).)[/side track]

[nedz]

...Why would you ban bags of holding? :smallconfused:

I'm playing a fighter with very high strength which allows me to carry lots of stuff; then the pixie goes and buys a bag of holding.
I take the Quickdraw feat so that the weapon I need is available when I need it; then the pixie upgrades his bag of holding to a Heward's Haversack.
Those things are just another way of screwing mellee.

[Eldest]

I'm playing a fighter with very high strength which allows me to carry lots of stuff; then the pixie goes and buys a bag of holding.
I take the Quickdraw feat so that the weapon I need is available when I need it; then the pixie upgrades his bag of holding to a Heward's Haversack.
Those things are just another way of screwing mellee.

Uh, the Bag of Holding weights 15-60 lbs, which is fairly hefty, although you have a fair point there.
The Handy Haversack, though, is a move action to retrieve anything. Which is very different than a free action.

[Coidzor]

I'm playing a fighter with very high strength which allows me to carry lots of stuff; then the pixie goes and buys a bag of holding.
I take the Quickdraw feat so that the weapon I need is available when I need it; then the pixie upgrades his bag of holding to a Heward's Haversack.
Those things are just another way of screwing mellee.

I'm failing to see how not being encumbered by having to carry all of the loot is "screwing melee," any more than a horse and cart or team of oxen and a wagon for going on the Oregon Trailback to town. Because if the pixie didn't have the bag of holding and the fighter had no easy-carrying items himself, then the fighter would have to carry all of the loot and decide between foregoing his heavy armor or taking penalties from carrying lots of heavy loot and his heavy armor.

:smallconfused: Quickdraw is generally a waste of a feat even as far as feats go unless one gets something for drawing a weapon in the round, otherwise aside from the monk and rogue and their ilk, "melee" automatically gets to draw their weapon as part of a move action, just for having 1 point of BAB.

[Killer Angel]

I guess I'm one of the few DM's that goes for the other route. I'm more then willing to let divination and teleports and such be used.
(snip)
So my world is full of such things, both mundane and magic ways to handle the so called problem spells. And like anything, it's an on going process.

Of course all of this can be done, but still you have different approaches and different styles of campaigns.
You can have high magic, with teleport, scrying, defensive measures, yadda yadda. A feeling very peculiar, with tactics developed accordingly.
You can have campaigns where the journey itself is a great part of the adventure, and those possess a flavour which is different from the previous example.
Then you can have a mix of both, with difficult scrying and teleport, that gives you a tool to avoid some difficulties, leaving intact the true exploration... nice if done in a good way, but as a DM, you can still have limited options ("The enemy blocks the mountain pass to home" "we hide and prepare the ritual. Teleport").


:smallconfused: Quickdraw is generally a waste of a feat even as far as feats go

Yep; I could even say that quickdraw is another way to screw meleers, 'cause normally is simply another trap feat (obvious trap is still a trap).