Preventing Players from using spells to bypass adventures?

[Gwazi Magnum]

Most of you are probably aware of how in later levels a ton of adventure hooks and ideas can become useless because players can use spells like time traveling, changing dimensions, locate anyone's whereabouts etc. as a simple "I win" button for the encounters/plots.

However I am strongly against DM fiat. I've had terrible experiences with a DM abusing it to get anything his way when he truly had no reason or excuse for them other then "I'm the DM, if you don't like it then get out. But then I'll sabotage your next campaign for leaving mine". So when I DM I liked to have proper reasoning or mechanical back up when trying to enforce something or add some kind of restriction (and not I use restrictions sparingly, I like to give players as much freedom as possible).

But I don't want high level plots to simply be solved with a spell or two. So anyways rules, mechanic rules, spells, creative ideas etc that you guys know of that helps keep most plot hooks and ideas possible for higher levels would be most appreciated.

Also if you can, what spells and such do you find to be most guilty of simply solving/putting a stop to adventures in it's tracks?

[Urpriest]

High level plots are, by definition, plots that can't just be solved via a spell or two. Basically, if you're trying to get your players to do a plot that they can bypass with a few spells, then it isn't an appropriate plot for their characters.

Think about Superman. If you want to tell a story involving Superman, you don't rely on him needing to take a plane to get to Europe. That's just not appropriate for the character's capabilities.

[lytokk]

had a DM stop us with dimensional anchors and antimagic fields. Granted, ways around it, but it stopped the dimensional doors and other magic spells as at that point, we realized the DM wanted us to do something, came up with this deterrent ahead of time, and decided to play along.

There's plenty out there to block divination spells, can't name any specifics but I know there are.

[Flickerdart]

If your adventure can be bypassed by a single spell, it's not a level-appropriate adventure.

[Grod_The_Giant]

High level plots are, by definition, plots that can't just be solved via a spell or two. Basically, if you're trying to get your players to do a plot that they can bypass with a few spells, then it isn't an appropriate plot for their characters.
This. So much this.

You don't have to go to Tippyverse extremes, but you have to know the rules, and assume that NPCs do too. Important people and objects will have nondetection spells, important locations will be locked down with dimension anchor, things like that. Or have traps-- scry on the BBEG? Too bad that was an illusion you just looked at, and when you try to teleport in you fall through the illusionary floor into a portal to the positive energy plane.

[hymer]

There is a blunt but honest way: Let them. The session is cut in half, but if that's what the players want, why stop them? If they complain, ask them for advice on how to do better for them. If they can't come up with anything and you can't either, just keep doing what you've been doing.

Perhaps more helpfully: Most of the plot-breakers are divination spells in my experience. They are, however, usually sufficiently vague that a single casting won't give the whole thing away. Don't let the ambiguity go. Let them get something, hints at least, but preferably something that will make things easier for them. But in the end, maybe the entity you contacted lied, or the divination was foiled by illusion, or whatever the players' nimble brains can cook up (and you too, of course).

Finally, sometimes I let the players get a cheap victory. If I/BBEG messed up, or they made a lucky guess, or whatever, I let them win. Same goes with those spells and abilities. They're not perfect, but it shouldn't feel like a waste to cast them, at least not most of the time.

[xkaliburr]

High level plots are, by definition, plots that can't just be solved via a spell or two. Basically, if you're trying to get your players to do a plot that they can bypass with a few spells, then it isn't an appropriate plot for their characters.

Think about Superman. If you want to tell a story involving Superman, you don't rely on him needing to take a plane to get to Europe. That's just not appropriate for the character's capabilities.

However, you can put some restrictions occasionally to make it interesting. I think it would be cool to put them in a situation where for some odd reason they cannot use their power, I.E. Clark Kent taking a trip to Europe with Lois when suddenly the plane is hijaked, and he is at the window seat so he cannot become Superman. Stuff like that.

However, I would say the post is right, in general you want to craft a more difficult encounter that cannot be solved with a couple of spells

[Urpriest]

A few people are giving tips involving countering particular abilities. Let me be more general:

Imagine your players were in the villains' shoes. Given that, how would they accomplish their goals? That should give you an idea of what sort of villain tactics are appropriate to the level and strategic savviness of your group.

[Flickerdart]

There is a blunt but honest way: Let them. The session is cut in half, but if that's what the players want, why stop them?
The problem here is that players are usually very well aware of the tools at their disposal, and think the DM is as well. So if the DM builds a whole countryside worth of bad guys for them to fight before they get to the BBEG's castle, and the PCs go "we'll just teleport there," they expect that there will be things to do once they get there. If the DM didn't expect them to do this, there won't be any things, because getting there was supposed to be the challenge. Many DMs then get mad when PCs complain about not having anything to do when they got there, because they made all this stuff and the PCs clearly maliciously ignored it.

[Know(Nothing)]

Divinations and teleportation spring to mind as the first things that will turn the game into just a series of boss battles.

Divinations can be countered with preparation, but if your players are after someone/some place that has no means to prevent scrying or the like, it's pretty hard to stop. There is something like Vecna-blooded which is think is a template that makes a creature immune to all divination, but that won't work for every creature.

Teleportation has the handy addendum of
Areas of strong physical or magical energy may make teleportation more hazardous or even impossible.

...and as DM you decide where those areas are.

[Harrow]

Pretty much what everyone else is saying. Low level quests can consist doing favors for the wizard's guild to be given the location of a portal to the Plane of Air where you do more favors to be given the location of a sage who will, if you do him some favors, give you the location of the dungeon that holds an artifact that will stop the iron golem from rampaging through the countryside.

You may note, however, that any of these steps could be bypassed by a spell. The fact is that, by level 12, threats to anything short of the existence of an entire plane aren't high stakes enough. Leave that to the amateurs. Our heroes should be more concerning themselves with the Blood War ending, being shipped off to Ravenloft and having to get back, Deities taking mortal from and causing inter-planar warfare, that kind of thing.

And remember, anything your party can do, a higher level caster can do better, and custom artifacts are perfect excuses to stop casters from doing something you didn't see coming. However, try not to combine the two too much or your players will feel railroaded.

[Studoku]

Have you considered playing E6?

Since spells higher than level 3 are typically not available, it's much harder to break the campaign as spells such as Teleport, Raise Dead or powerful divinations aren't around.

[hymer]

@ Flickerdart: I don't disagree. The idea with blunt honesty is to highlight the issue with it, and then talk openly about what everyone should now understand.

[Angelalex242]

A better way to do it is to prepare for the divination spells. And in fact, make it NECESSARY to cast them just so the PCs know what's going on.

Have a list of questions players might ask ready when the party cleric casts commune. Have a divination pre-written up for that spell. And know in advance if Augry says weal or woe. Likewise, contact other plane. Know in advance who the wizard's going to get on the other end of the line. And prepare for commune with nature too.

[Person_Man]

+1 to Ur Priest's comment.

High level play is not about grinding through dungeons. Even if everyone is Tier 4 or lower, by the time you reach ECL 15+ you have access to magic items that can bypass or auto-win most traditional encounters. It's an entirely different game.

If you don't like that game, just play E6 or E8 or 4E or 5E or any of the old boxed editions of D&D or Mage Knight or Mouse Guard or games with "flat" progressions in general.

[Harrow]

I had forgotten about this when I last posted, but I am a huge fan of E6 and suggest it for anyone who's never tried it. All games don't have to be E6, but things are a lot easier, especially on less experienced DM's.

[Emperor Tippy]

However, you can put some restrictions occasionally to make it interesting. I think it would be cool to put them in a situation where for some odd reason they cannot use their power, I.E. Clark Kent taking a trip to Europe with Lois when suddenly the plane is hijaked, and he is at the window seat so he cannot become Superman. Stuff like that.

However, I would say the post is right, in general you want to craft a more difficult encounter that cannot be solved with a couple of spells

Superman is fast enough that he can appear to be sitting there perfectly still and be acting on the other side of the world "simultaneously". So that was probably a bad example.

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As others have said, if it can be solved by a single spell or two then its probably not a level appropriate adventure.

Do little things like have the BBEG's fortress be a limited magic demiplane that is set to block things like Wish, Planar Bubble, Planar Pocket, and the various other spells that let you get around limited magic traits. The the thing is though, the BBEG isn't native to said demiplane and has Permanent Emanation: Planar Bubble as one of his feats. So sure the PC's can just Wish themselves into the BBEG's lair but unless they went adventuring to find out the particulars of his security system they might well find themselves stuck in a situation where many of their abilities don't work and they can't escape.

One of my favorites is to have the BBEG's personal inner sanctum be a demiplane where time moves a hundred billion or so times slower than the material plane and then the BBEG has Permanent Emanation: Planar Bubble to keep the area around him acting like it is the material plane. If you don't enter the plane with Planar Bubble already activated then you are frozen effectively forever until the BBEG gets around to releasing you.

Then there is always the old standby of a buddy hanging around on yet another personal demiplane or inside a secure and unknown fortress that the BBEG has an Interplanar Telepathic Bond with and who has a Craft Contingent True Resurrection or 40 on hand. Kill the BBEG with any method that doesn't prevent True Res and he is immediately back up and running (even if the PC's will often still think him dead).

Then you have the old Shaped Selective Antimagic Field combined with persistent lesser ironguard to render the BBEG totally immune to metal weapons (and most magic) with very little sign of why this is (the AMF only covers the BBEG's square).

Then you have the fun that is an advanced Shaesteel Golem with Rudimentary Intelligence and Infinite Deflection+Exceptional Deflection (added fun with Factotum or Psion levels). Very hard to kill.

Then you have the Selective Permanent Wall of Force that just happens to be in an area with the Limited magic trait set to Disintegrate and Disjunction. The BBEG can just walk right through but the PC's better have a Rod of Cancellation on hand or another method to bypass the area if they want to progress.

If you are a power in a high ECL game then you have enemies and have survived the games of intrigue at a very high level. Idiots die very fast at this level and everyone's defenses are dozens of layers deep with multiple redundancies. With a lot of work you can find weaknesses and bypasses to exploit so that you can finally permanently remove your enemy but anyone who tries scry and die against, for example, a Great Wyrm Red Dragon is going to find that they are the ones who die when all of the sudden 20 Craft Contingent Wish spells go off and drop the dragons elite guard of other similarly difficult monsters and individuals around him. And strangely enough said dragon just won't die even though you have been pounding on him with full attacks for hours. Well if you have done your research you would have found that he has used the spell Hide Life and that you first needed to break into the dragons vault and destroy the separated bit of flesh before you could beat him to death.

Oh the PC's used Greater Planar Binding to call up a Pit Fiend. Well were they smart enough to do so on a plane with Limited Magic: Wish? Because if not then the Pit Fiend can free its self at any time by the little Ring of Three Wish's that it created last year with its yearly Wish. Or were they smart enough to hit it with a disjunction the second it showed up? No? Well then it used its Permanent Telepathic Bond with the Grand High Puba of Material Plane Demonic Operations (hangs out on an asteroid in interstellar space and any demon authorized for operating on the material plane has a permanent telepathic bond with him) to inform said demon that some pesky mortals have called it up. Twelve seconds later a hundred Pit Fiends greater teleport to the area to teach the uppity mortals just why its a bad idea to call up Hell's generals without permission.

[Squark]

While the E6 reccomendations aren't... bad, per se, I think we're missing the point. Gwazi is asking for a crash course in how to challenge powerful characters. To use the superheroes metaphor again, he's asking how to challenge a team of Superman, Captain Atom, and Green Lantern. While telling him that the team will be a lot easier to challenge if it's Black Canary, Green Arrow, and Hawkgirl, that's not really answering the question.


So, the basics.


-Know your Kryptonite: While excessive use of Dimensional Anchor, lead lining, mind blank, etc. can be frustrating, you can and should use it on occasion to do things important.
-Know what's easy: The first super hero teamup I mentioned is quite capable of crossing vast distances (even interstellar distances, thanks to GL) in a very short time, much like teleportation. As a result, do your best NOT to use these as obstacles the plot hinges on. Your villains are not fools. They should know that remote locations on their own are not enough.
-Pit them against people of similar power: Superman vs. random mugger is a 1 page story. Your villain needs to be capable of going toe to toe with the heroes. So, don't pit them against an Orc king. Pit them against a powerful demon or wizard who has lots of minions. And do your homework and know how to play that villain such that he's a credible threat to the party.
-Improvise: In spite of having no real super powers, the Joker's come within a hair's breath of killing Supes on a number of occasions because he's just so unexpected. The players are inevitably going to come up with something you don't expect eventually, so have exit plans, backup villains, etc.

Emperor Tippy is a good example of what heroes at the top of their game can do. But if you don't think you're quite at that level, don't be too worried about it; after all, most players aren't quite there, either. Still, he does have some good ideas.

[Icewraith]

Do little things like have the BBEG's fortress be a limited magic demiplane that is set to block things like Wish, Planar Bubble, Planar Pocket, and the various other spells that let you get around limited magic traits. The the thing is though, the BBEG isn't native to said demiplane and has Permanent Emanation: Planar Bubble as one of his feats. So sure the PC's can just Wish themselves into the BBEG's lair but unless they went adventuring to find out the particulars of his security system they might well find themselves stuck in a situation where many of their abilities don't work and they can't escape.

One of my favorites is to have the BBEG's personal inner sanctum be a demiplane where time moves a hundred billion or so times slower than the material plane and then the BBEG has Permanent Emanation: Planar Bubble to keep the area around him acting like it is the material plane. If you don't enter the plane with Planar Bubble already activated then you are frozen effectively forever until the BBEG gets around to releasing you.


You could also have a demiplane where time moves at a 10x increased rate or similarly fast but not ridiculously so (to prevent the BBEG being launched years into the future by spending a few rounds in the demiplane), giving whatever nasty things you actually have in there ten full rounds of surprise before the party can do anything when they teleport in with Planar Bubble up. You do need whatever it is to operate outside the party's bubble however.

[Epsilon Rose]

There is also the option of throwing challenges at them that they simply can't apply their powers to. These generally either take the form of social and rp challenges, like mediating negotiations between high-level factions that are immune to normal diplomancy and mind control, or unique monsters that break the rules and require a quest to find a way to defeat.

Since we're referencing comics, I'd sight Sandman and Thesally as excellent examples of this. Dream, the protagonist in Sandman, is a fundamental aspect of reality and Thesally is an immortal witch who, I'd argue, is orders of magnitude more powerful than Superman. At the same time their comics tend to be more interesting then Superman's comics because their goals aren't things they can apply their powers to directly and, often times, they have to take very circuitous routs to actually reach their goals. Sometimes they even have to undo things they themselves set up. Even with Superman, his most interesting comics tend to not be the ones where he's having knockdown drag out fights with superpowerful foes, but the social with more mortal characters that can have multiple possible conclusions (because we all know that he's going to beat Darkside in the end).
A great example of this is the comic where he talks a woman off a ledge. At any point he could have simply picked her up and flown her down at any point, he could have also simply left her to jump or carried up another mortal to deal with her. The thing is, he doesn't need to do any of these things and it's interesting to see what he does and how he does it.

[Gwazi Magnum]

@Those who suggested counter-divination spells: What spells exactly are these? And how exactly do they function? Is it a "You may not teleport or scry into this room" sort of deal?

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@Everyone else: So basically the answers I'm getting is, just make it higher level?

Though with my question being "Is there a way to keep some plot hooks and ideas to avoid being useless Higher level?" you're all basically saying, "No, you can't. Just throw away those and keep with a much fewer library".

This also leads to issues though with groups where they may not want every other encounter to be against some demon or demi-god but don't want to restrict themselves to E6 or E8.

[Flickerdart]

Though with my question being "Is there a way to keep some plot hooks and ideas to avoid being useless Higher level?" you're all basically saying, "No, you can't. Just throw away those and keep with a much fewer library".
If you think of player capabilities as getting in your way then you need to think long and hard about how you DM. Yes, as you level up, some plots stop being viable, but others become so. This fits with player expectations; if they keep doing the same crap they always do, it'll feel like they are not making any progress at all.



This also leads to issues though with groups where they may not want every other encounter to be against some demon or demi-god but don't want to restrict themselves to E6 or E8.
When you're a powerful adventurer, you face powerful threats. There are loads of high CR monsters that are neither demons nor demigods.

[Emperor Tippy]

There are only a handful of basic adventures and they can be run at pretty much any level.

I mean probably 99% of the quests that you ever do are listed in the following: Steal something, guard something, kidnap someone, recover someone who has been kidnapped, kill someone, prevent the killing of someone, convince someone, construct something, or destroy something.

All that changes are the specifics. At level 1 you might need to steal an IOU stored in the local merchants back room, at level 20 you might need to steal a major artifact from the vault of an Archduke of Hell.

It's still the same basic job. The only difference is how involved, difficult, and resource intensive those jobs are.

[Jade_Tarem]

I'd say combine Epsilon's advice with Tippy's. There's no way around having to know the rules and having to know how to construct a decent plot. By the time the players hit level 10-12, they should be kind of a big deal at least on a national scale. Plots will likely involve events that will matter on a worldwide level, at least a bit. Numerous groups will want to manipulate, call upon, petition to, or otherwise exploit the party, though now some of those groups are no longer powerful enough to do so. The party can still be challenged by the classical mook enemies, but only in great numbers. It's a sweet spot for throwing powerful monsters or clever traps at them. If that doesn't work, try powerful monsters in great numbers inside a clever trap. :smallamused:

By the time they hit 14-16, adventures may take them to any corner of the world at any time. Only true beasts of legend are going to challenge a group like that on their own, and frankly, most beasts of legend have better things to do, so the party is likely going to them. Anything they do at this point is either directly altering the course of a nation, making an impact on the global stage, a ploy to make silly amounts of money, or a waste of their talents. Factions with the ability to mint their own money (re: governments) are now highly interested in the game-changing abilities possessed by even Tier 3-4 characters. Powerful extraplanar entities are starting to notice them, just in case they survive long enough to unlock the secrets of true power.

At level 18-20+, the PCs are now fully enmeshed in a game of godly chess and interplanar musical chairs that may end up restructuring the multiverse or, at the very least, playing kingmaker with dieties. They have a few contacts and a favorite cafe or tavern in every plane of existence, and their daily concerns include things like refreshing the permanent charms and wards placed on the party to prevent Ungorgolathros the Hellmeister's curse from finding you until you figure out how to kill him without freeing him from his Astral Supermax Prison, where time is an illusion and geometry is a punchline. The world's most dangerous orc or plant means nothing more to you than the world's most dangerous lolipop. You're actually petitioned by mortals for aid less often now, because the number of mortals capable of penetrating the laundry list of abjurations that you have screening your calls is much shorter than it used to be. Money is a meaningless thing, as any amount of it can be accumulated at any time. If you *are* being challenged by mortals or vaguley humanoid non-outsiders, then they are much like you - full of treasure and class levels.

As Tippy said, the stakes are what changes.

As for specifically challenging the players, most of the advice posted so far is good, and on top of that I'm a big fan of attrition over outright denial - a single spell almost never solves everything if the goal requires ten disparate steps to accomplish, in a short time, while the party is under attack. Stuff like that.