Teleport here, there and everywhere!

[Synchaoz]

Hey GIANTS, I'm looking for a bit of input on how to handle those !@#$ teleport spells my players are getting increasingly horny with.

We're currently in the PC level 10-11 range, closing in on level 12, in a party of four. One of my players is a dracolexi/sorcerer with Teleport, and the other is a half-ogre mystic theurge (yep, you read that right). Both of them have Teleport and Plane Shift spells, and they are not shy of using them for basically anything. The half-ogre nearly killed himself with a Plane Shift, much to my amusement, so he probably won't be using that much again, but that damn Teleport is getting on my nerves.

It's like this often; I design some cool dungeon with all sorts of hazards that are supposed to be a risk-reward thing for the party. They are supposed to feel tense and on edge delving around, but every time things start getting a little too hairy for their liking or they end up somewhere they don't like being; TELEPORT AWAY *poof* - sigh. I manage to split them up against their will? *poof* teleport. I manage to wall them inside some place they need to do detective work to escape? *poof* teleport. It's sucking the fun out of many scenarios for me as a DM when my players can always just teleport out of everything.

It kills travelling. It kills suspense. It kills random encounters and it makes laying any sort of location-based ambush/trap/whatever impossible without me being lame and pulling the "dead magic zone" card all the time. I would love to hear some ideas on how to limit their mobility a bit so they can't just constantly teleport in-and-out of danger without risk.

Worse yet is they have started using it in conjunction with Scrying to make it even more of a pain in my arse. They need to go some specific place, and to get there I set up some clues and puzzles and hints and NPCs and stuff they can interact with to discern a path to get there, but instead it's just "We scry the location and teleport there." Uh yeah, great. As much as I hate doing so, I'm going to start shutting down their Scrying with non-detection, misdirection, counter-scrying etc very soon, but that still doesn't stop them from teleporting around so much.

I have ideas on how to shut it down, but most of them are kinda lame. I would love some input from yous all on what's reasonable without it feeling contrived or railroaded from my side. Especially on teleport, since I can't quite figure out how to stop them doing that short of denying them the ability to cast spells. Which I'd rather not do since I don't want to make the spell casters feel like chopped liver.

Peace.

[Werephilosopher]

If they teleport away from dungeons/ambushes/encounters, don't give them any rewards. They haven't earned treasure or experience if they haven't finished the challenge.

Smart people line their dungeon walls with lead, to prevent scrying. They could use dimensional anchor effects too. If your players face people they've teleported away from before, they might try casting dimensional anchor on your players to prevent another escape.

Also, to be "very familiar" with the place being teleported to, they'd have to scry the place for at least an hour. Be sure you enforce this.

[Regissoma]

The easiest thing I can think of are Binding arrows a +1 enhancement that literally says no to teleporters, found in the Arms and Equipment Guide and allow no save if you hit them with one. Alternatively a trap of Dimensional Lock prevents them from teleporting freely. And there are ways to prevent scrying so if they can't see or know of the area they can't just teleport directly there.

[Madwand99]

You can't actually scry on a location with Scrying (you need the Scry Location spell to do that), you have to scry a person. And they get a save, and other opportunities to avoid the spelll.

As for teleporting, my best advice is to stop caring about it. You seem to "want" some behavior out of your players. Don't do that, just give them the challenge and let them decide how they handle it. If you start caring, you're going to get really stressed out about every spell that comes along, and high level games are just going to be no fun for you. It's not your job to control how the PCs handle a challenge, it's theirs.

[Emperor Tippy]

Why are you running dungeons for 12th level characters without including teleportation blockers?

[jedipotter]

Fixes I use:

Teleport of 1-4 th level is line of sight only.

5th level and above is 1 mile per caster level.

The chance of a telport working is 20% +1 per caster level.....unless the caster has been to the location in person and studied the location for a whole hour.

A studied location is only good if it remains unchanged, so locations with no movement are the best. Even a slight change, ruins the location and you get the avove precentage. You can move a fork on a table and the location is ok, but cut down a tree ruins it.

[Bakkan]

Unfortunately for your preferred playstyle, your players are reaching the levels where the game is designed to give them lots of answers to lots of problems, one of them being travel. At their level, it's going to be difficult to impossible to put them in a situation they can't escape them without using specialized NPC builds or traps.

At this point, taking away their toys is going to seem railroady, even if you're doing it for the sake of overall fun (I know, it happened to me). It seems to me that you have two good options.

Option 1: Adjust your own paradigm about how the game is supposed to look, because there's a major shift once mages start getting access to 4th- and 5th-level spells. Dozens of spells, from freedom of movement to teleport, allow the mage to eliminate a significant chunk of danger from his travels. At this point, if you want them to actually explore a dungeon rather than teleporting to the end, you're going to have to have the "end" be something whose location they don't yet know. For instance, perhaps every room in the dungeon is encased in lead, preventing most divinations from working, and the PC's have to find the princess who was captured and is being kept somewhere in the complex. Travel is no longer a good source of random encounters, and nothing is going to be able to kill the PC's without significatn planning and expenditure of resources.

Option 2: Write a satifying conclusion to your current campaign, let the mages find out much information through their divinations, and then constuct a final battle where they have to deal with an enemy who has studied them and has counters for some of their most commonly-used tactics, such as anticipate teleportation or its greater cousin. Congratulate them on their victory, or console them because they lost, and then start a new campaign back at a low level, where you're most comportable and enjoy the game the most.

[Synchaoz]

Lots of great advice, thanks everyone. I think I need to wrap my mind around adjusting to how things work with high level spellcasters in the group. I've got plenty of options to track them and anticipate much of their movement from a story-line perspective that is already in place and running. It just wasn't something I had considered much from the start, since the campaign started at level 1.

I'll try to be less pedantic about them using their mobility spells so much and start looking more into reasonable countermeasures. Thanks a ton, ya'll have given me some more material to ponder and work with, I feel less restrained now :smallbiggrin:

[Vaz]

Have them ambushed by elite units (Jaunters are amazing, especially on Initiators), with the Astral tracking feat - you now chase after them, even across Planar Boundaries.

Tracking them after they have fled is usually easy enough. As the DM you have the collective optimization brains of the Internet to help you locate them. But with Astral Tracking they are unlikely to be prepared for it. Make it obvious that the trackers can teleport more than the party ever can, and thanks to links like telepathic bonds the BBEGs know where the party is hiding and can send a mook army to hunt down their base and smash it, say. These assassins could be recurring problems (Agent Smith alikes).

[fishyfishyfishy]

Lots of great advice, thanks everyone. I think I need to wrap my mind around adjusting to how things work with high level spellcasters in the group. I've got plenty of options to track them and anticipate much of their movement from a story-line perspective that is already in place and running. It just wasn't something I had considered much from the start, since the campaign started at level 1.

I'll try to be less pedantic about them using their mobility spells so much and start looking more into reasonable countermeasures. Thanks a ton, ya'll have given me some more material to ponder and work with, I feel less restrained now :smallbiggrin:

I think the key here is adjusting your play style ever so slightly, because it's the story you have built with your group that is important. You want to send a group of mid to high level adventurers into a "dungeon"? Give them a reason to be there. Why should they care about random monsters popping up in front of them if all they exist for is to get more XP? Think about the purpose behind each encounter and every dungeon and figure out how it helps/stirs up the plot. My players are level 10 and they are all tier one spell casters who have access to various spells that zip them across the continent in an instant. But they don't do this willy nilly because there are places they need to be at certain times and events they have to intervene in. Also think about putting pressure on them by giving them a timeline to accomplish certain tasks. Make the results of failure catastrophic not only for them personally, but for entire kingdoms! They aren't at the level where they can be everywhere and do everything all at once. But also keep in mind that they eventually will be at that point, and the campaign will have to once again shift to a different play style if you want to keep going.

Good luck.

[jjcrpntr]

Ya it sucks, in the game I'm running I told the players that long range teleports are incredibly rare to find. Thankfully the only casters in the group are a bard, ranger and inquisitor.

I never really understood the fun in that playstyle as a player. The DM designs a world, dungeon, scenario and you just use an "i win" spell or teleport away. Not saying there's anything wrong with it, just not something I ever really liked.

Just to mess with my players I had them go to a city where 3/5ths of the city is protected by a giant anti magic field and then dropped a murder mystery in for kicks.

If you don't want them teleporting around there are ways around it.

[DR27]

It's not for everybody, but in games where you still want there to be travel, but not "instant escape" - teleport gains a long casting time and expensive material component. Keep tactical teleportation (dimension door, regroup, etc) - but just removing the combat effectiveness of the spell goes a long way. Changing mid-campaign requires sitting down and having a discussion about how the spell is affecting your ability to set up encounters with your players, but is worth it a lot of the time.

Also, anticipate teleportation is your NPC enemy's best friend.

[SiuiS]

Why are you running dungeons for 12th level characters without including teleportation blockers?

Or redirectors? Or just clever enemies?


A favorite trick of mine is liberal use of magic and non-magic. Like, use hallucinatory terrain and similar to make it so that wherever the target of the scry is, it's going to look exactly like a heavily trapped portion of the Himalayas so the party teleports there and searches throuh the heavily trapped area – they can't teleport to the actual, scried location because they didn't see it. They only saw the disguise and they didn't teleport to that place disguised as the other place.

And for those high level enemies who can see through magic and illusion? A long term investment of identical rooms. Like, once you hit around +40 intelligence I mean identical down to atomic structure via fabricate. Use of high level abstract magics to conjoin these locations via planar and stellar conjunction. I've hidden things in "vaults" that are self-sustaining cities underground that have weird laws requiring everyone to dress identically and periodically rotate social position and which don't believe in a outside world, and there are eight of them. Each one holds three locations within it to store something valuable (all identical), and each one stores a duplicate of the stored item (or the original because it needs storing), using magic and clever design.

I've also used teleport through time to create a false prophecy that started a whole slew of campaigns specifically to help me rise to power, though, so be aware that this level of play is freaking ridiculous. All it takes is a closed time loop, a carefully preserved flower, teleport through time, social skills and triggered imprisonment (on yourself, as a time capsule) and suddenly everything the gods have been saying about how to defeat the great evil technically works by replacing it with a greater evil.

[rexx1888]

set up some form of calamity to affect the multiverse. Give it a quick plot, but make the calamity itself unavoidable(not a "how do we stop this" scenario, but a "how many can we save" scenario. Done right they both deliver gratification. Make it a war of the gods or something so players dont get too pissed about not being able to stop it). Now, calamities are great. They reset the status quo. Equally, one on a multiversal scale changes natural laws. Now, with said calamity you can either nerf teleport into the floor. OR you can just outright delete it. Make some form of reward for players with the spell(possibly supplying them another spell or gold or what have you) but just remove it. Honestly, nerfing it feels cheaper than deleting it. Also, it may motivate your players to try to fix the spell or some such, and provide them with fun adventures till the campaign is done.

honestly, waiting until lvl 10-11 to nerf spells and remove them may have hobbled you a bit on this one, but it cant be helped sometimes.

Personally i despise teleport an such, but thats because i play mundanes an teleport essentially makes them thoroughly pointless(in my experience, more so than many other spells). They cant even 'protect' the mages in a game of ferry the god when teleport comes into play. While you are at it, you may want to delete many of the other terribly broken high level spells(miracle, wish, theres a whole list of them on this site somewhere, Grod_The_Giant also has a homebrew list). Anyway, goodluck

[Slipperychicken]

You could just talk to them about banning long-distance teleports.

[deuxhero]

Areas of strong physical or magical energy may make teleportation more hazardous or even impossible.

This part is never defined, so go wild.

[Yogibear41]

You can't actually scry on a location with Scrying (you need the Scry Location spell to do that), you have to scry a person. And they get a save, and other opportunities to avoid the spelll.

As for teleporting, my best advice is to stop caring about it. You seem to "want" some behavior out of your players. Don't do that, just give them the challenge and let them decide how they handle it. If you start caring, you're going to get really stressed out about every spell that comes along, and high level games are just going to be no fun for you. It's not your job to control how the PCs handle a challenge, it's theirs.

I agree with pretty much everything said here. But I will toss out a few additional thoughts I have as well, based on my experiences and how the game I play in works(which could be completely different than yours)

First I would look at it from the perspective of what would I actually do in a particular situation if I was my character and had access to the spells/powers that I had. So lets say I am a sorcerer, I know eventually(and to a certain extent already being level 10-12) have amazing powers that could potentially change the face of the world as we know it, but I also know I am human, just as mortal and squishy as a normal human being (like me or you) sure I might have all of this defensive magic buffs to protect myself, but at the end of the day 1 to 2 hits with a sword and i'm basically dead. So coming from this stand point then yes, if I can scry to scout what I have to deal with I will, if things start to look badly and I am separated from my party, or we find ourselves fighting some sort of creature say a golem immune to magic we have no way to deal with, with near 100% certainty of victory with no casualties, why fight it at all if we can just poof around it, or even if we do eventually have to fight it we can just leave and come back again ready and prepared for the threat.

If you want the character to stay and deal with a situation without retreating, you don't have to use any special non-teleportation magic, just give them a valid reason/motivation to stay and finish what they started. For example if they are just going through a dungeon to make money they really don't have any reason to be in a hurry to go back if they loot the first bit and find 10,000 gp that can keep them well stocked when it comes to food, drink, and companionship for essentially the rest of their lives, so why go out and risk dying 2 days later? However, if they are say on a rescue mission then maybe they don't have time to retreat and regroup, maybe the captive is going to be sacrificed in a days time, or maybe they are trying to stop the big bad guy from completing that hideous magical ritual deep within ancient catacombs, and if they fail he grows considerably more powerful, or kicks off some kind of apocalypse. In those cases the players will have to stay and find a way to deal with threats here and now, because if they don't serious consequences will happen.


In the world I play in high level people are rare, 90% of the world are level 1-2 people, with 9% being the standard adventurers probably in the 3-8 level range with the majority being on the lower end, and the 1% if you will holding the positions of power or the power behind the throne(granted I'm not the DM this is just an estimate from my observations). So a 10th level magic user is going to be a pretty smart and resourceful, because well he has survived in a world where most of his peers die trying.

[Telok]

Scry and Die is a semi-famous (or infamous) technique of adventuring after 10th level. It's first appearance was back in the late 80's or early 90's during AD&D, at least that's when I first heard about it. Since it's not unknown people will be using it and defending against it, including the party's enemies.

Detect Scrying (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/detectScrying.htm)
Dimensional Lock (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/dimensionalLock.htm)
Hallow (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/hallow.htm) can be augmented with Dimensional Anchor (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/dimensionalAnchor.htm)
Guards and Wards (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/guardsAndWards.htm) can be made permanent, as can Mage’s Private Sanctum (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/magesPrivateSanctum.htm).
Sequester (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/sequester.htm) and Screen (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/screen.htm) can mask areas.
Of course there is the ever popular Forbiddance (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/forbiddance.htm).

Never forget, the evil wizard scrying your poor fighter untill he's alone and then teleporting in to zap his low will save is just an excuse to hand the player a doppleganger assassin character sheet and a note that says "You're on MY team now."

[Firechanter]

Lots of great advice, thanks everyone. I think I need to wrap my mind around adjusting to how things work with high level spellcasters in the group. I've got plenty of options to track them and anticipate much of their movement from a story-line perspective that is already in place and running. It just wasn't something I had considered much from the start, since the campaign started at level 1.

I'll try to be less pedantic about them using their mobility spells so much and start looking more into reasonable countermeasures. Thanks a ton, ya'll have given me some more material to ponder and work with, I feel less restrained now :smallbiggrin:

It's great that you came to this conclusion so quickly. Let me add a few words of encouragement.

D&D play style changes several times over the levels. That's intentionally to keep things fresh and new. D&D doesn't want to put you through the same old rut every level. That's why classes keep unlocking new spells and class features; it's a built-in rejuvenation effect.
It may be fun to play out travelling day for day, foraging for food and tracking creatures, dealing with poisons and all kinds of nature hazards, mapping dungeons and brooding over carrying capacity and how to haul away all that junk. For a while. After a while, that kind of stuff gets repetitive and not much fun for most players.
That's where Good Guy D&D comes in and offers all sorts of utility magic that gets rid of this small-time micromanagement. Food? Neverending Rations. Carrying capacity? Bag of Holding. Dungeon navigation? Find the Path! 500 miles journey? Teleport! It allows you to skip all the boring rut and get straight to the interesting stuff. You should embrace it, not fight it. (Now that sounds a bit like "Ssshhh... stop resisting..." ;) )

This means that you not only _allow_ the players to use Scry and Teleport, you build your challenges so that using that magic is _required_. D&D is all about being prepared. A highlevel party rushing into an encounter unprepared very quickly becomes a dead party. Glorious victory and crushing defeat often lie but one divination spell apart.

As for Teleport specifically, there are several ways to make it less of a pain without using houserules. 1. You can enforce the standard rules for Teleportation errors.
2. Design your challenges to the players _need_ Teleport to get places. That way, you make them feel good about using it while drawing some resources out of their noses.
3. There are plenty of ways to shut down Teleport. Check out the Dimensional Lock spell. If you play in the Realms, there's a magic item that shuts down teleports in a many-mile radius.
4. What the players can do, a lot of enemies can do, too. Demons for instance have at-will Teleport. I can tell you from experience that this gets very annoying. =D

[VoxRationis]

Perhaps someone has mentioned this already, but why not build the "dungeons" with the expectation that the party will teleport around to them? The DMG talks about "event-based" adventures as well as simple dungeon crawls. Have the encounters be in places the players could go to any time if they wished (like a druid grove 40 miles outside the city walls or one particular pub inside them), but wouldn't unless they had some reason to do so. Use those reasons and the flow of information to act as the doors and passageways between dungeon chambers.

[Pan151]

If it were a new campaign, you could outright ban all long range teleportation. In that case, however, do make sure to also include teleportation portals or something of that sort at specific locations - that way you can control where and how your players can teleport, and retain the ability to put encounters/plot hooks along the way from the portal to the actual destination, but at the same time you won't have the problem of the plot stagnating due to the PCs being unable to travel anywhere within a reasonable amount of time. Seriously, you'll sooner or later run out of anything that you can have them do in the general area they start in, and at that point you definitely don't wanna have them walk for a few weeks straight to the next nation over.

Now, seeing that you're in the middle of the campaign, and retconning the entire teleport system is probably too big of a change to introduce at this point, you can mostly solve your problems with some generous application of lead walls, anti-magic fields, dimensional anchors and other similar anti-magic effects.

PS. Oh, and seriously, spellcasters of that level are not gonna even care about the odd troll tribe or dragon cave they pass by, unless there's an actual plot reason for them to do so. Same applies to random non-magical dungeons.

[prufock]

Hey GIANTS, I'm looking for a bit of input on how to handle those !@#$ teleport spells my players are getting increasingly horny with.

Truth be told, in my campaign I'm anxious for the party wizard to get teleport. There are only so many ways to work in free travel, and they are at a point in the campaign where kingdom-spanning events are happening. Teleport would be a godsend. I expected them to have access by now, but the wizard is actually a multiclass warlock/wizard/eldritch theurge, so spell progression is a bit behind.

Thing is, teleportation is a big part of play at higher levels. So one solution for you is to run lower-level adventures.

[ahenobarbi]

If it were a new campaign, you could outright ban all long range teleportation. In that case, however, do make sure to also include teleportation portals or something of that sort at specific locations - that way you can control where and how your players can teleport, and retain the ability to put encounters/plot hooks along the way from the portal to the actual destination, but at the same time you won't have the problem of the plot stagnating due to the PCs being unable to travel anywhere within a reasonable amount of time. Seriously, you'll sooner or later run out of anything that you can have them do in the general area they start in, and at that point you definitely don't wanna have them walk for a few weeks straight to the next nation over.

Actually you could ban very-long-range teleportation (long range is defined as 400 ft. + 40 ft./level ;) ). Players then can use for example phantom steed to travel long distances:
* It has up to 240ft speed so it can move about 50 miles / 80 km per hour so they can travel significant distances if they need to.
* It can at high enough caster level) walk through air so it will be able to get them through terrain obstacles.
* Characters still can be attacked when traveling if you want to (though it will be hard if they are cautious).

But I wouldn't recommend this I like haing access to teleport very much (and it seems that your players like it too).

[Mnemnosyne]

As far as dungeons go, there's a simple answer (which may have been brought up already, about to head off and I haven't read every post). Teleport doesn't work in dungeons. Why?

Well, if you look at the teleport spell's description you will find it says "Areas of strong physical or magical energy may make teleportation more hazardous or even impossible." That means that any area you declare to have strong physical or magical energy, whatever that even means, can screw with teleportation.

Now, this might seem arbitrary, but let me ask you this...why do dungeons exist? No, really, it's a great question, because the typical dungeon makes no goddamn sense as far as logistics, defensibility, etc, goes. Unless the dungeon is where it is and how it is specifically in order to take advantage of one of these areas of strong physical or magical energy. People in the world can completely logically and in character build things on top of these areas specifically to thwart teleportation. That's a really good explanation for both the existence of dungeons, and why you can't just teleport in and out of them. Of course, if you go with this, you have to be consistent about it - the enemy can't use teleportation to escape, either.

Any fortification, any place where the residents could reasonably not want people able to teleport past their defenses, may very well be built in one of these areas, and indeed is likely to have been built in such an area even if it makes it a little more inconvenient. Why, for instance, does the local baron live in a castle two days ride away from town? Because the spot his castle is built on is an area of strong energy, which prevents teleportation, and he really preferred not to have assassins teleporting into his bedchambers, or his prisoners teleporting out of his dungeons. The evil lich's dungeon, the profane cathedral of an evil god, and so on, also are extremely reasonable things to be built in such locations.

[nedz]

I'm fine with my players doing this. In a game which has just ended SOP was to have status up on everybody and then use that to Teleport or 'Door to their location. They would normally travel over, or under, land teleporting back to base each evening. Teleporting to a town to buy stuff, or have people raised, was quite normal.

This is a function of mid-high level play.

A standard trick to stymie it is to have transdimensional dungeons — teleport doesn't work across planes — but that can just make them use multiple teleports.

[Demonic Spoon]

Give some enemies Binding weapons and have them whack a PC or two.

[Psyren]

"Areas of strong physical or magical energy may make teleportation more hazardous or even impossible."

Put all your bad guy bases behind waterfalls or under volcanoes. It's even thematic!

[Segev]

Remember, too, not to keep your dungeons static. If they bamf out of a dungeon because it's "too hard," the things they just met should a) be getting ready for the party's inevitable return and b) be considering whether to track them down.

Why are they in the dungeon in the first place? Expect that the players will want to skip to "the end," or at least as far forward as they can. IF you could skip the hour of traffic going to the airport, or even the entire security line and plane ride, wouldn't you just go straight to your vacation? If you were tracking down a murder suspect, wouldn't you go straight to him rather than chase him on foot?

Saving throws against scrying help a lot, as they make scrying unreliable. Against foes who know about the teleportation and scrying, those foes can set up traps. Yes, you scried out Mr. McEvilton in his Badass Lair of Villainy, and jumped straight into his chamber...but what you didn't realize is that he's got it rigged with a dimension lock that he can trigger at will, and is actually filled with nitrogen gas. He's wearing a Necklace of Adaptation. He 'ports out and turns on the Dim Lock when he sees them arrive!

This sounds like a DM **** move, but it's actually a rational response on the part of an intelligent and savvy villain.


Similarly, you can make them need to save their teleports by taking advantage of the fact that not everything needs to be in one place when you design your adventure. Maybe they'll need to 'port back and forth between two or more locations repeatedly, and they're on a time crunch. They can't frivolously teleport without using up their resources, and they might need that teleport to get back for one more thing...


Finally, enemies can use similar tactics. If they're taking on level-appropriate threats, at least some of these dungeons should have intelligent forces in them which will recognize the danger of an intruder that just teleported out. They likely will be back, better prepared, and able to enter right here. Scry-and-die tactics can be pulled by NPCs, too. Have the monsters/antagonists scry out where the players retreated, and teleport in to bring the fight right back to them!

[Gabrosin]

Time pressure is the key. Your party will only have a certain number of teleports per day. If they use them to flee the dangerous situation they're in, that's fine... but coming back the next day might mean that the valuable item/person/whatever they were after is moved/destroyed/otherwise gone. They failed because they bailed.

Combine time pressure with ways to foil scrying (preferably ones that provide deceptive answers, rather than just outright blocks).

[Bronk]

You might want to consider where they're always teleporting to... is it a safe place? Their home, hideout or just a store somewhere? They can be tracked back to those places using the planar tracking feat, the planar tracking net, or any number of other spells and magic items. They might be followed, or, if they do it often enough, they could have the baddies waiting for them when they go back the second, third or tenth time. Maybe the baddies came and went, ruining their stuff or kidnapping their allies, or maybe its an ambush.

[icefractal]

There's some things you can do to make Teleporting harder or impossible, but IMO, those should be used sparingly. Instead, evolve your adventures. Walking through a swamp to get to the other side just isn't a 12th level adventure, flat out. After all, if nothing ever changes in what type of obstacles you face, what was the point of leveling up all those times?

So - travel.
Travel to get to a known destination just isn't a thing anymore - let it go. Travel to search for something, to patrol an area, to escort a royal procession, or any other reason that involves needing to see all the area between A and B is still relevant though.

Stuck in a room.
Well first of all, if you want to keep adventurers - at any level - stuck in a room, it better be a serious room suited for that purpose. Because smashing things is like adventuring 101, and walls are things. So once you have your seriously reinforced vault that can survive an angry Barbarian with an adamantine hammer, you might as well make it Dimension Locked as well. This does mean that they were probably trapped here intentionally by an enemy, not just stumbled into it. Which is fine - less blundering into trouble seems appropriate for higher levels.

Jaunting back to town.
Is this really a problem? In terms of actual time at the table, it's less disruptive than camping out in the dungeon. If you want attrition, put a time limit on things, or make your attrition happen within a single lengthy encounter. Otherwise, people are going to rest as much as they can - a logical enough decision when you're facing life or death situations.

Random monsters.
Put more monsters in the fights they do have. I'd say that less random bandits and wildlife is another change that's appropriate for being high level.

Scrying
It's not unreasonable for foes at this level to take precautions against Scrying. Also, you need information to Scry, so simply using a "cell" structure for the villains where random mook #8 doesn't know enough info to reveal where the doomsday ritual is happening will work.

Dungeons based on teleporting
One thing that becomes possible, when the PCs are strong enough to face people capable of this (which they are now), is to make a dungeon that utilizes portals in its construction. What if every room is a different vault, sunk deep into the earth, many miles apart from each-other? They're connected by permanent portals, or even just scrying windows that allow someone enough familiarity to teleport to the next one. Now teleportation is the baseline for navigating the place, not something that can skip 90% of it.

Even better dungeon
For the villain with serious power, a series of linked demiplanes could be considered the ultimate base of operations. With appropriate usage of planar properties, you can make it straight-up impossible to smash past the entrance, and not so easy to jump in and out.

[Bronk]

Also, you might want to consider that sometimes the monsters or NPCs could be the ones teleporting away, and the PCs would need to track them down.

Perhaps their tactics are similar to the PCs... they come back and forth, or continually bring in more foes, perhaps using a teleportation circle or two, or a magic item, and they are difficult to defeat or root out because of that.

Or, maybe they start fleeing battles more often, using teleportation of some sort to make clean getaways. In this case, the PCs would get XP from that, but perhaps the ones that flee the fastest also have most of the loot... and they could also sound the alarm, or set up future ambushes. That would make discovering ways to track them down a priority for the PCs and could be more exciting.

[nedz]

Also the monsters could use Scry and Die on the party too.

[Synchaoz]

Sorry for necro'ing my old thread and for taking to long to respond.

I just want to thank all of you for your incredibly valuable input. This is a real eye-opener and has given me a lot of insight and angles that I had never even considered. I've already started putting a lot of the suggestions made here by almost all of you on paper, and it's really working out great in the campaign. I'm far less daunted by their scrying and teleportation, and they have become somewhat more wary of relying on those means too much, but have not yet felt like I'm shoehorning them because I have clear and valid reasons to fall back on if they feel like I'm working too hard against them (which I'm not, I'm finding a great balance so far.)

I especially loved the demiplane dungeon idea where teleportation becomes an integral part of traversing it, and am currently working on redesigning a main-plot encounter involving such mechanics.


Absolutely awesome stuff. Awesome responses, coming here has been an amazing resource for ideas, input and general enlightenment. A thousand thumbs up for all ya'll!

[Hazrond]

Fixes I use:

Teleport of 1-4 th level is line of sight only.

5th level and above is 1 mile per caster level.

The chance of a telport working is 20% +1 per caster level.....unless the caster has been to the location in person and studied the location for a whole hour.

A studied location is only good if it remains unchanged, so locations with no movement are the best. Even a slight change, ruins the location and you get the avove precentage. You can move a fork on a table and the location is ok, but cut down a tree ruins it.

Take this man's advice with a rather large grain of salt, I've seen some of his houserules and they range from "ok - utterly stupid" in my opinion

[Spuddles]

OP, start designing encounters/storylines where the PCs HAVE to use teleport. Forget about the escorting merchant caravans or walking across the desert or all that mundance crap. The only reason OotS does it is because their wizard is a 3.0 specialist evoker who had to ban conjuration. I suspect the Giant did that for story purposes, of course.

So if you have a macguffin, expect the PCs to teleport to get it. Also, use their willingness to leave via teleport against them. If they flee an encounter, let their foes regroup and prepare for them.

[Segev]

Take this man's advice with a rather large grain of salt, I've seen some of his houserules and they range from "ok - utterly stupid" in my opinion

I strongly suggest not engaging in criticism of the person when there is objective material to examine. Focus instead on what has been offered as potential house rules and comment on them.

[Zanthy1]

So the OP mentioned that the party tries to stick together, and they use teleports to make that happen. Well If they encounter something that they may try and teleport away from, have just one of them get teleport blocked. The party will either have to teleport back to save their friend, or abandon the hapless chap. This does fall, generally, along the lines of being cruel because regales, that character who was left behind will probably be dead. Especially if the other players hesitate. An encounter mean to be handled by the whole party is not being faced by a lone adventurer, for at least a round or two. That could very well be the end of him. Cruel towards that player, BUT it might teach the players a lesson. Or it might not, it really depends on the players.

[Psyren]

So the OP mentioned that the party tries to stick together, and they use teleports to make that happen. Well If they encounter something that they may try and teleport away from, have just one of them get teleport blocked. The party will either have to teleport back to save their friend, or abandon the hapless chap. This does fall, generally, along the lines of being cruel because regales, that character who was left behind will probably be dead. Especially if the other players hesitate. An encounter mean to be handled by the whole party is not being faced by a lone adventurer, for at least a round or two. That could very well be the end of him. Cruel towards that player, BUT it might teach the players a lesson. Or it might not, it really depends on the players.

The lesson this would teach me is that I need a new DM.

[Vogonjeltz]

Hey GIANTS, I'm looking for a bit of input on how to handle those !@#$ teleport spells my players are getting increasingly horny with.

We're currently in the PC level 10-11 range, closing in on level 12, in a party of four. One of my players is a dracolexi/sorcerer with Teleport, and the other is a half-ogre mystic theurge (yep, you read that right). Both of them have Teleport and Plane Shift spells, and they are not shy of using them for basically anything. The half-ogre nearly killed himself with a Plane Shift, much to my amusement, so he probably won't be using that much again, but that damn Teleport is getting on my nerves.

It's like this often; I design some cool dungeon with all sorts of hazards that are supposed to be a risk-reward thing for the party. They are supposed to feel tense and on edge delving around, but every time things start getting a little too hairy for their liking or they end up somewhere they don't like being; TELEPORT AWAY *poof* - sigh. I manage to split them up against their will? *poof* teleport. I manage to wall them inside some place they need to do detective work to escape? *poof* teleport. It's sucking the fun out of many scenarios for me as a DM when my players can always just teleport out of everything.

It kills travelling. It kills suspense. It kills random encounters and it makes laying any sort of location-based ambush/trap/whatever impossible without me being lame and pulling the "dead magic zone" card all the time. I would love to hear some ideas on how to limit their mobility a bit so they can't just constantly teleport in-and-out of danger without risk.

Worse yet is they have started using it in conjunction with Scrying to make it even more of a pain in my arse. They need to go some specific place, and to get there I set up some clues and puzzles and hints and NPCs and stuff they can interact with to discern a path to get there, but instead it's just "We scry the location and teleport there." Uh yeah, great. As much as I hate doing so, I'm going to start shutting down their Scrying with non-detection, misdirection, counter-scrying etc very soon, but that still doesn't stop them from teleporting around so much.

I have ideas on how to shut it down, but most of them are kinda lame. I would love some input from yous all on what's reasonable without it feeling contrived or railroaded from my side. Especially on teleport, since I can't quite figure out how to stop them doing that short of denying them the ability to cast spells. Which I'd rather not do since I don't want to make the spell casters feel like chopped liver.

Peace.

Where are they teleporting to? Statistically speaking they are going to run into a mishap eventually.

Some options:

Option 1:
Forbiddance is a 6th level cleric spell that prevents teleportion into or from an area. Thematically it would make sense going on a crypt, or other holy/unholy place.

Dimensional Lock prevents use of extradimensional travel in an area. It's an 8th level spell for clerics and sorcerers/wizards.

Enemies could also use dimensional anchor on the actual characters to prevent them from fleeing that way. This would be useful if the enemies have reason to believe they can flee via teleportation. (i.e. they see the PCs do just that.)

Option 2:
Flip the tables on them. Present a fight where the enemies flee using teleport if things go badly.

Option 3:
They aren't the only adventurers in the world. If they spend all their time scrying out locations, maybe another party beats them to the punch. Next time they're busy scrying the Ruins of Phatlewts for the 5th time before actually going there, have them see another guy kick in the door, clean house, pack up all the loot, and leave the place empty (and now worthless to them). Maybe they'll take a hint that the universe isn't going to stop moving just because they want to be extremely cautious.

Option 4:
Let it go. Your players seem to be enjoying the tactics, presenting them with the occasional hiccup is fine and a fun way to shake things up, and if they are, doesn't that mean you're doing your part? Players shouldn't be stymied at every corner just because.

*I agree with fishyfishyfishy that presenting them a compelling reason not to teleport in and out would be good too. Perhaps they have to rescue someone from a well-defended fortress where the builders actually put some thought into defending against teleport/summoned creatures (Forbiddance).

[Glimbur]

So the OP mentioned that the party tries to stick together, and they use teleports to make that happen. Well If they encounter something that they may try and teleport away from, have just one of them get teleport blocked. The party will either have to teleport back to save their friend, or abandon the hapless chap. This does fall, generally, along the lines of being cruel because regales, that character who was left behind will probably be dead. Especially if the other players hesitate. An encounter mean to be handled by the whole party is not being faced by a lone adventurer, for at least a round or two. That could very well be the end of him. Cruel towards that player, BUT it might teach the players a lesson. Or it might not, it really depends on the players.


The lesson this would teach me is that I need a new DM.

Depends how it was done. If one of the party members gets hit with Dimensional Anchor, especially if the enemies a) know the party likes to teleport and b) the party ID's the spell, then it feels less malicious and cruel than just arbitrary "teleport didn't work lol".

OP, I'm glad to hear that the advice you got was helpful; some threads people ask for ideas and don't report back on how they worked out.

[Psyren]

Depends how it was done. If one of the party members gets hit with Dimensional Anchor, especially if the enemies a) know the party likes to teleport and b) the party ID's the spell, then it feels less malicious and cruel than just arbitrary "teleport didn't work lol".

There is no way to do that before the party leaves though. Either you hit one of them before the 'port, in which case they all know you've done so and can choose to stay with their friend, or you wait too long and they're gone. There is no "you notice X didn't come along because I secretly hit him with Dimensional Anchor and none of you rolled Spot to see that he was glowing green."

[Segev]

There is no way to do that before the party leaves though. Either you hit one of them before the 'port, in which case they all know you've done so and can choose to stay with their friend, or you wait too long and they're gone. There is no "you notice X didn't come along because I secretly hit him with Dimensional Anchor and none of you rolled Spot to see that he was glowing green."

Honestly, them knowing their friend can't come along would achieve a similar goal. The goal isn't the "gotcha," but the delay to give the teleporting retreat a chance to work.

[nedz]

One idea which might be refreshing is to give them a quest to recover a McGuffin which is immune to Teleport.
They could

Scry it's location
Teleport in
Grab it
Teleport out, only to then realise that they don't have it any more
Teleport back in
Fight/Walk their way out

Thus you get to design an inside out dungeon, which is always a fun trick.

It would get old if you did this more than once though.

[Dalebert]

My DM banned teleport and any sort of long-distance flight that would circumvent the adventuring associated with travel right from the start of the campaign. I asked if he was going to give me access to spells to replace the ones he was banning since I'm not thrilled with my spell list and he said he would. We were fine with it. I tend to agree it sucks a lot of the fun out of the game. It's like playing a video game with cheat codes.

[Silva Stormrage]

There is no way to do that before the party leaves though. Either you hit one of them before the 'port, in which case they all know you've done so and can choose to stay with their friend, or you wait too long and they're gone. There is no "you notice X didn't come along because I secretly hit him with Dimensional Anchor and none of you rolled Spot to see that he was glowing green."

Celerity + Dimensional Anchor or Readied actions might work.

Also for another set of defenses. The anticipate teleport line from SpC is really good at preventing the edge that teleportation gives. It delays creatures who teleport next to the caster by 1-3 rounds and alerts the caster. Next time the group teleports in to scry and die a boss the boss will have placed 2-3 summoned creatures in the way and teleported away himself (If he can flee without sacrificing his base). Otherwise he can still buff summon/call for help and general be much more of a threat. Also the spells last 24 hours.

[Faily]

Many GMs I know and have played with houserule that Teleport is limited to:

1. A place you have physically been.
2. Can be observed with mundane means (that tower I see in the distance there).

Some GMs have also outright banned Windwalk, to avoid the party outright bypassing the dangers of the travel. :smallamused:

As with all houserules, it's cool as long as the GM lets you know ahead of time.

[Dawgmoah]

When I DM I do not ban teleport or any aspect of it. What I will do though is watch the details. All it takes to go to the wrong place is one minor litlte glitch in the spell or in the description. Please note the spell Teleport has that chart for mishaps and so on. Take advantage of it.

But I also liken it to the stages of the usual first world human being.

When you are a baby you crawl. As a toddler you learn to walk and then run. In your youth you ride skateboards and bicycles and perhaps a motorcycle. As a teen you get a car while some even learn to pilot a plane.

Each one of those steps come with their own advantages and disadvantages. If you are walking there is less of a chance of hurting yourself walking into something. A bit different when driving a car.

So let that party enjoy the advantages of near instantaneous travel; they probably earned it. But just like those unfortunate souls on the flight shot down over Donetsk; there are dangers in any method of transportation. Just roll for those mishap chances and listen carefully to when they scry or try to describe what they are doing. Illusions and magical effects can wreak havoc on teleportation attempts.