Negating Diminsion Door

[Kesnit]

I'm running a 3.5 campaign with LVL 11 PCs. Since the Rogue put points into Search and Disable Device (and I wanted a change from all monster encounters), I decided to start throwing encounter traps. To test how well they work (and would go over) before making my own, I pulled 2 out of Dungeonscape. (Razor Pendulums Trap and Dispelling Pit Trap.)

The Pendulum trap stumped the party for a bit. (The Warlock failed her Spot check to find the key, and the other two were on the wrong side of the blades to see it.) So they gave up and dimension door-ed through the locked door at the end. (All have it as a spell or spell-like ability.)

We ended the session before they got to the other trap, but I can already see they will do the same thing - dim door through the door at the far end and bypass the trap. In fact, I can see that becoming the go-to solution for every trap I give them - "let's just dim door out of this room."

Other than an anti-magic field (which I strongly dislike, since it seems like I'm saying "no, you have to do it my way!"), what are ways of negating dim door? (Because, yes, I want the party to do it "my way.")

[Renen]

It's a teleport action effect and those go through the astray plane. So just have some sort of magic trap set on the astray plane, and group be told that they will trigger it if they astray plane travel via teleportation.

[Red Fel]

First off, can Dimension Door take you someplace you can't see? If not, problem solved; you can't use it to get past a door unless you can see what's behind it.

Second, consider the fact that, even if the spell takes them someplace they can't see, they don't know what's there. Ambushes waiting behind a closed door are a thing, and the spell explicitly stops you from taking an action - which basically creates a guaranteed surprise round. Curving passages are another problem - remember, if they designate a spot and it's inside of a solid object, they get shunted aside and take damage. Similarly, solid walls that seal are a thing - if something isn't so much a "door" as it is a "thick wall that parts," teleporting past it means teleporting into the wall, triggering the shunting problem. And note that shunting is "to a random open space on a suitable surface within 100 feet of the intended location." That could be right where they started, potentially.

That said, it's kind of a jerk move to suddenly cause every door to lead to an ambush or shunt situation. Doing it once, maybe twice, will get the message across that it's not always wise, but using it constantly is basically just a way of saying "stop doing that," and the better way is to actually tell your players. Just take them aside and point out how you work really hard on creating engaging dungeons and encounters, and for them to simply DD past everything is kind of frustrating for you.

Or, you know, stop creating bottleneck traps. Because those can get pretty old, chief.

[Venger]

Other than an anti-magic field (which I strongly dislike, since it seems like I'm saying "no, you have to do it my way!"), what are ways of negating dim door? (Because, yes, I want the party to do it "my way.")

It's like you understood why this mindset was problematic and then decided you didn't care about that and wanted to just do tha anyway and make your PCs play a game of "guess what the DM's thinking" and punish them for creative problem-solving

further reading (http://arsludi.lamemage.com/index.php/90/bad-trap-syndrome/)

don't do this. if you want them to interact with your traps, then make traps something beside a HP tax for walking down a hallway and not something that's just busy work for your party trapmonkey


First off, can Dimension Door take you someplace you can't see? If not, problem solved; you can't use it to get past a door unless you can see what's behind it.

yes you can (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/dimensionDoor.htm)


That said, it's kind of a jerk move to suddenly cause every door to lead to an ambush or shunt situation. Doing it once, maybe twice, will get the message across that it's not always wise, but using it constantly is basically just a way of saying "stop doing that," and the better way is to actually tell your players. Just take them aside and point out how you work really hard on creating engaging dungeons and encounters, and for them to simply DD past everything is kind of frustrating for you.

Or, you know, stop creating bottleneck traps. Because those can get pretty old, chief.

this pretty much. if it's an OOG problem, it demands an OOG solution.

[ShaneMRoth]

Dimensional Lock could work

[eggynack]

further reading (http://arsludi.lamemage.com/index.php/90/bad-trap-syndrome/)

don't do this. if you want them to interact with your traps, then make traps something beside a HP tax for walking down a hallway and not something that's just busy work for your party trapmonkey

I think that problem is the problem that the OP is trying to solve through the introduction of encounter traps, cause encounter traps are sweet. In any case, you could always give an incentive for dealing with the trap. Like, put a visible treasure at the center of the trap chamber that's pretty much impossible to get without going through or disabling the trap somehow. You kinda want to give out treasure for dealing with encounters anyway, so it should fit reasonably with your overall plans.

[P.F.]

Fake door with solid rock on the other side (or extremely thick stone door). Take 1d6 damage and appear at a random open space within 100 feet of the intended destination. Possibly back into the trap, possibly into a small cavity. Because it's a random shunt they will have no idea where they are and will need to guess-dimension-door out of it, probably taking another d6 damage and reappearing in another random open space.

Ever-popular room-filling-up-with-water trap in the small room just beyond the door. Doors open inward and require ever-increasing strength to open once the room begins to fill as the pressure from the water holds it shut.

The players are trying to escort / rescue an NPC who can't / won't dimension door (because he carrying say an amulet of dimensional anchor or its against her religion or whatever).

Level 11 is where the game really starts to transition from something like Hero-Quest deluxe to something different. 5th-level spells like passwall, teleport, plane shift, and true seeing make previously difficult-to navigate dungeons easy to bypass. Everyone can fly, see invisible, and, apparently, use short-range teleportation. You have passed the levels where traps are encounters, and entered the stage of the game where they are "content" or "fluff."

[Kesnit]

It's like you understood why this mindset was problematic and then decided you didn't care about that and wanted to just do tha anyway and make your PCs play a game of "guess what the DM's thinking" and punish them for creative problem-solving

That was a poor attempt at being funny. :smallredface: I'm perfectly OK with my players doing something other than I intended. (I also run a Vampire:the Requiem game for a different group, and have long since given up trying to guide them. I just throw things at them and see what they do.)

It's just frustrating to put effort into something, just to have the players wave their hands and completely bypass any challenge without even trying to find another solution.


don't do this. if you want them to interact with your traps, then make traps something beside a HP tax for walking down a hallway and not something that's just busy work for your party trapmonkey

Just to clarify, the Rogue had points in Disable Device and Search before I decided to add traps. And he always Searched every passage, before I started adding traps to dungeons. My decision to add traps is so he has something to find, since he insists on Searching anyway.


this pretty much. if it's an OOG problem, it demands an OOG solution.

Two of my players are a little more understanding than the third. I'll talk to them first and get their take on things before I bring it up to #3.


Second, consider the fact that, even if the spell takes them someplace they can't see, they don't know what's there. Ambushes waiting behind a closed door are a thing, and the spell explicitly stops you from taking an action - which basically creates a guaranteed surprise round.

That one had crossed my mind. However, the Rogue (who is actually a Rogue/SORC/Daggerspell Mage) made a point of going invisible before he dim doored through the locked door. And while I've already made it clear that casters can See Invisible (I use SORC/Warlock/Eldritch Theurge as my casters), the dungeon they were in is stocked with undead, not all of whom can see invisible.


Curving passages are another problem - remember, if they designate a spot and it's inside of a solid object, they get shunted aside and take damage. Similarly, solid walls that seal are a thing - if something isn't so much a "door" as it is a "thick wall that parts," teleporting past it means teleporting into the wall, triggering the shunting problem. And note that shunting is "to a random open space on a suitable surface within 100 feet of the intended location." That could be right where they started, potentially.

Not a bad idea. At least it would make them think twice about automatically going to dim door.


That said, it's kind of a jerk move to suddenly cause every door to lead to an ambush or shunt situation. Doing it once, maybe twice, will get the message across that it's not always wise,

I don't want to stop them from doing it. I just want them to think twice before they do it, and be willing to try something else. If it works sometime and fails others, they can never know what the outcome will be. Maybe they'll think it's worth the risk, maybe they won't.


Or, you know, stop creating bottleneck traps. Because those can get pretty old, chief.

As I said above, the Rogue searches for them anyway.


Dimensional Lock could work

I'd thought of that, but it comes back to why I didn't want to use an anti-magic zone.

[Lerondiel]

Remind the players that traps are like monsters and have an EL and you award XP if characters deal with them rather than run around them :)

[Red Fel]

Remind the players that traps are like monsters and have an EL and you award XP if characters deal with them rather than run around them :)

... Except that running around traps is, in a sense, dealing with them, much like, say, detecting and avoiding a wandering pack of monsters is overcoming the encounter. The goal is getting past the thing; how you do it is less important than that you do it.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

Anticipate Teleportation in Spell Compendium is a touch-range spell that lasts 24 hours and guarantees opponents get a full round of preparation (black tentacles, buffs, etc.) plus a surprise round on creatures who teleport in. It's only a 3rd level spell, and a single spellcaster opponent in the dungeon with a Lesser Rod of Extend and two 3rd level Pearls of Power can keep that active on himself and five other creatures at all times for a single 3rd level spell slot each day. Put that on just one creature in each encounter and the PCs will be extremely wary of teleporting into any unknown location again.

[Crake]

I'd thought of that, but it comes back to why I didn't want to use an anti-magic zone.

For a site-wide anti-teleportation spell, see forbiddance. But really, while AMF wouldn't make sense, someone using forbiddance to stop mages from bypassing his traps is pretty logical if the maker of the trap was taking into account magic users. Think about who made the place and whether they were capable of securing it against mages or not.

Forbiddance also has a two-fold benefit of stopping mages from just summoning minions to run ahead and trigger all the traps, so I think any competent trap maker who was taking into account magic would have a site-wide forbiddance on his trap labyrinths

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

Just put an Advanced Gelatinous Cube immediately on the other side of the next door. They'll teleport into it and be automatically engulfed, just be sure you get what everyone is doing before you reveal the outcome of anyone's actions.

[Renen]

Pretty sure no one is stupid enough to teleport all at once holding hands, and not go one by one incase there's a trap.
Oh, and "getting everyone's actions" isn't a thing, because unless they teleport at the same time (and not have 1 guy go first, and yell "all clear") they aren't actually obligated to follow through with any "declared action" (ok, some actions, but not in this case)

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

Pretty sure no one is stupid enough to teleport all at once holding hands, and not go one by one incase there's a trap.
Oh, and "getting everyone's actions" isn't a thing, because unless they teleport at the same time (and not have 1 guy go first, and yell "all clear") they aren't actually obligated to follow through with any "declared action" (ok, some actions, but not in this case)

If they're teleporting to the other side of the door that's down the hall past a bunch of traps, how will they know what the first guy teleported into? Just say he teleported into an empty room but hand him a note so they don't metagame. It's not like he can shout for help from inside a gelatinous cube.

[Renen]

If he teleported safely he knocks on the door. If he didn't teleport safely, there's a distinct lack of knocking.

[Telok]

If he teleported safely he knocks on the door. If he didn't teleport safely, there's a distinct lack of knocking.

Double doors. I've seen it occasionally in old buildings and often in hotels with connected suites. Each side has it's own door with a deadbolt on that side.

Bonus points if the trap room is an illusion and the real trap is a summoning trap between the doors.

[Segev]

How often can they use dimension door? Simply having enough traps could handle this. Unless they have an unlimited number, or so many as to be practically unlimited, making them use it up is a successful use of the trap.

Additionally, phantom trap (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/phantomTrap.htm) can be used liberally by a spellcaster to increase paranoia without having to actually invest in a trap every 55 ft.

For this dungeon, I wouldn't change things much. Let them use dimension door as their trap-avoidance mechanism. Don't even be frustrated by it; just note whether it in any way seems to be impacting their ability to dimension door at other times. Build the next dungeon a little "better" for taking advantage of trap design. Think of it from the perspective of the dungeon builder: would he have known to worry about dimension door and other teleportation effects bypassing his traps? If so, how would he have designed his dungeon to handle it? Don't aim specifically at your party; just think of what problems a dungeon's designer might anticipate from clever delvers and how he'd design to thwart them. Or even exploit their expectations and tactics to turn them against them.

[Yuki Akuma]

My advice is to make failing at skill rolls still do something, rather than requiring a Spot check to succeed.

The absolute best way to make a game more engaging is to stop saying "no" and instead saying "yes, but". (Or, if you must, "no, but".)

If I'm not being clear, the problem is not that everyone could bypass the trap with Dimension Door - it's that failing the Spot check to find the key gave them absolutely no way to progress. They just hit a road block.

[Lerondiel]

... Except that running around traps is, in a sense, dealing with them, much like, say, detecting and avoiding a wandering pack of monsters is overcoming the encounter. The goal is getting past the thing; how you do it is less important than that you do it.

Very true :)

I'm just one of those annoying DMs that would watch a party dimension door past 17 traps and suggest they're not learning anything, not gaining anything experientially, no chance of failure = zero challenge rating and no XP :)

[ericgrau]

Going past traps is what dimension door is for. Let it work when it works. But you can sometimes make traps where there is no safe spot in this room and if they ddoor blindly into the next room then they fall or get shot with poison darts or etc. They are getting close to the point where everyone should have a means to fly anyway. Traps should expect a little mobility.

Also don't make the search and disable device DCs too high. At this level he should also be reliably disabling most anything mundane making it the obvious choice. Especially if not in combat nor threatened by a previous trap and he takes a 10. But often even when rolling. And what exactly is the fun and challenge of having a 50% chance or even a 25% chance of getting horribly hurt purely via a die roll? Then they may as well bypass it magically with a method that doesn't have a roll. If not ddoor, then fly or spider climb. The creative part should be getting the rogue to the trigger or the device and jamming it (spider climb the rouge?), or searching quickly enough for it or avoiding the room while under time pressure such as a monster combat.

[Urpriest]

They're encounter traps, you're supposed to run them as encounters. That means the PCs shouldn't be interacting with them by themselves, there should also be monsters there who can take advantage of the presence of the trap. For example, "just dimension door through" won't help as much if they're fighting incorporeal undead at the same time.


It's a teleport action effect and those go through the astray plane. So just have some sort of magic trap set on the astray plane, and group be told that they will trigger it if they astray plane travel via teleportation.

This requires trapping the entire astral plane, which is kind of ridiculous. Remember, the astral isn't like the plane of shadow or the ethereal plane, it doesn't have counterparts to material plane places.

[Andreaz]

Dimension Door tends to be one of those things that can't be done at will. So let them. Running out of DDs means they can't reposition instantly on the battlefield. Can't easily flee the caving-in dungeon. Can't flash-kill Key enemies before focusing on the rest. Can't avoid other traps...

[Psyren]

You don't have to use antimagic to stop teleportation or make it less desirable:


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

The above quote comes from the "Teleport" spell, but the use of "teleportation" can refer to any spell with the teleportation descriptor, including Dimension Door. So as long as you have strong energy nearby, you can make teleportation riskier or even disable it outright in certain situations without littering your dungeon with AMFs or banning it.

[Flickerdart]

"Corridor full of pendulum blades" is an Indiana Jones level problem. Level 11 is way past Indy - you're looking at legendary (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/legendLore.htm) characters. Of course they walk through toys like that without flinching. At this level, they should be slicing up dragons like salami and collecting demon heads on pikes. The traps they face should be at this magnitude.

I agree that there should be monsters - no amount of security is good enough without guards to mop up intruders. Consider stealing a page from Star Trek - the occasional villain of the week will have the ability to follow the Enterprise into their warp bubble and mess them up real good while they thought they were safe. So the PCs are teleporting - but the monsters are teleporting with them, and maybe the room they appear in now has two sets of monsters, instead of just one. Or hell, the monsters don't even have to teleport. Maybe the doors of the room just open (and the trap stops going) when it detects that it's been bypassed.

[Tulya]

By 11th level, parties are expected to have a wide variety of mobility, utility, and destruction effects that make brute forcing static challenges trivial.

Flight/Burrowing/Teleportation
Targeted Dispel + Shatter/Baleful Utterance
Power Attacking walls
etc.


Dimension Door tends to be one of those things that can't be done at will. So let them. Running out of DDs means they can't reposition instantly on the battlefield. Can't easily flee the caving-in dungeon. Can't flash-kill Key enemies before focusing on the rest. Can't avoid other traps...

I was assuming they were using the Warlock's at-will Flee the Scene for 50 foot dimension doors.

[Segev]

Oh, a corridor FULL of pundulum blades... that's easy to make dimension door less than perfect for:

1) Fill the corridor with obscuring mist, fog, or darkness, so they can't tell how far the blades extend down the hall, nor how long the hall is.
2) Put sub-objectives in the middle of the blades. For example, perhaps the door at the far end requires a lever to be flipped on the wall in each of the five foot squares making up the corridor's length; there is a pendulum blade between each of them.
3) Nasty in any event, but a modified reverse gravity effect exists on the far half of the hallway, including the way beyond, which makes the bladed hallway "down," so walking through it normally would have one step too far shove you back...and dimension dooring to the far side would have you plummet through half the hallway (and skid still further, most likely, due to momentum).
4) Similar to 2, but put Medium-sized fire-breathing critters or fixtures in the middle of the hallway, easily out of reach of the blades, but able to breathe cones of fire at people who approach or who are on the far side. (Make sure they are, themselves, immune to the fire breath of the other critters.)


One trap that is pretty nasty to pull on a party is as follows:


Beyond the doorway lies a well-lit room, about twenty-five feet on a side, lined with treasure. Floating absolutely motionless in the center of it is a magnificent-looking sword. Attempts to enter the room are thwarted by near-invisible barrier, as smooth as glass.
Detecting magic will determine that the sword is, indeed, magical (though it's only the result of a Nystul's magic aura). Attempts to teleport within cause a variable number of d6 of damage (teleporting right to the sword causes 3d6, to the far wall causes 5d6...a canny player will recognize that it's causing an amount of damage equal to the number of squares one attempts to traverse), but leave you stuck just outside the barrier.

Should anybody try to use the "unerring movement" effect of a Wish spell to get somebody inside the chamber, the entire thing becomes clouded with red mist with an almost fractal pattern (and the person who was moved inside is dead).

No effort to break down a magical field of force will work on the barrier. However, sufficient assaults on the barrier will cause it to scratch and crack, and may eventually chip it away enough to reveal that it is thicker than two dimensions: it's an entire room filled with solid, magically-reinforced, transparent crystal. (Alternatively, it could be Adamantine with an invisibility spell on it, but that is easily noticed with see invisible.) Teleportation fails because it's putting you inside a solid object. The "floating" sword is actually embedded in it, and the treasure is similarly embalmed. Wish unerringly forces the person into the solid crystal, and they get squished and forced across the entire lattice structure, making a gory mess.(edit: forgot to close my spoiler tag)

[Kesnit]

If I'm not being clear, the problem is not that everyone could bypass the trap with Dimension Door - it's that failing the Spot check to find the key gave them absolutely no way to progress. They just hit a road block.

There was another way to progress, and it was the way listed in Dungeonscape. They could destroy the swinging blades, which would also allow them to find the key. The party assumed (wrongly) that the blades would be too strong to destroy, even through they knew (because I told them) that they were each on an exposed pivot point. The Clawlock was already on the ceiling, so destroying the pivot points (with her 40+ damage per hit) would have been easy if anyone had thought to do it.


I'm just one of those annoying DMs that would watch a party dimension door past 17 traps and suggest they're not learning anything, not gaining anything experientially, no chance of failure = zero challenge rating and no XP :)

I don't give XP, so much as tell them when they level. Although I can take into account the ease of bypassing the traps and not count them towards their next level.


Also don't make the search and disable device DCs too high.

They weren't, actually. The Rogue spotted the trap before it triggered, but did not figure out how to disable it. The Clawlock is the one who triggered the trap when she walked past the trigger point. (Magical trigger in the middle of the hallway.) The Rogue was looking for a mechanical way to disable (level, etc.). Had he tried to disable the blades at the pivot point, he could have made the roll without too much difficulty.


They're encounter traps, you're supposed to run them as encounters. That means the PCs shouldn't be interacting with them by themselves, there should also be monsters there who can take advantage of the presence of the trap. For example, "just dimension door through" won't help as much if they're fighting incorporeal undead at the same time.

Yes, it would. D-door out would get them past both the trap and the undead.


Dimension Door tends to be one of those things that can't be done at will.

Yes and no. One of the PCs is a Clawlock, so does have d-door at will (Flee the Scene). The Bard never uses spells, so her 3 uses of D-door are effectively unlimited. (No other spells are taking away from her ability to use d-door.) The Rogue/SORC has a lot of uses of it, plus an item that gives him more uses of it, and if necessary, he can take the Bard with him.


You don't have to use antimagic to stop teleportation or make it less desirable:

That's not a bad idea. And it gives me something else I can use to discourage the constant use of d-door.


"Corridor full of pendulum blades" is an Indiana Jones level problem. Level 11 is way past Indy - you're looking at legendary (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/legendLore.htm) characters. Of course they walk through toys like that without flinching. At this level, they should be slicing up dragons like salami and collecting demon heads on pikes. The traps they face should be at this magnitude.

Low op characters. (Though there is a dragon encounter coming up soon.)

The party (or at least the Rogue) WANTS traps. So I gave him traps. And he proceeded to decide the trap was too complex and just bypassed it. I could throw an Avatar of Cthulhu, 3 Elder Evils, and the 9 Princes of Hell into a trap, and the party would just d-door past it. (OK, so the Elder Evils and Princes of Hell probably have ways to stop d-door, but I think you get my point. Short of me setting up ways to keep them from using d-door, there is nothing stopping them from just bypassing it.)

Edit:

By 11th level, parties are expected to have a wide variety of mobility, utility, and destruction effects that make brute forcing static challenges trivial.

Flight/Burrowing/Teleportation
Targeted Dispel + Shatter/Baleful Utterance
Power Attacking walls
etc.

The Warlock can fly, but there was a locked door at the end that she could not open without the key. There was no magic to dispel once the trap triggered (though there would be in future traps). Shatter/Baleful Utterance would have worked to disable the trap, had anyone bothered to use it. (To the Warlock player's credit, she is my wife and the PC has a rather low INT. For both reasons, she tends to sit back and let others solve problems.) Power Attacking the walls would also have worked, had there been a PC with the feat.


Oh, a corridor FULL of pundulum blades... that's easy to make dimension door less than perfect for:

1) Fill the corridor with obscuring mist, fog, or darkness, so they can't tell how far the blades extend down the hall, nor how long the hall is.

The Clawlock actually walked across the ceiling to the end of the room, though I see your point.


2) Put sub-objectives in the middle of the blades. For example, perhaps the door at the far end requires a lever to be flipped on the wall in each of the five foot squares making up the corridor's length; there is a pendulum blade between each of them.

That wouldn't stop d-door, as they can just d-door past the door at the end.


3) Nasty in any event, but a modified reverse gravity effect exists on the far half of the hallway, including the way beyond, which makes the bladed hallway "down," so walking through it normally would have one step too far shove you back...and dimension dooring to the far side would have you plummet through half the hallway (and skid still further, most likely, due to momentum).

Ooo... Reverse Gravity... I like!


4) Similar to 2, but put Medium-sized fire-breathing critters or fixtures in the middle of the hallway, easily out of reach of the blades, but able to breathe cones of fire at people who approach or who are on the far side. (Make sure they are, themselves, immune to the fire breath of the other critters.)

Again, d-door just bypasses everything.


One trap that is pretty nasty to pull on a party is as follows: (snip)

Oh, that is so evil! I love it!

[Segev]

Three uses per day is actually not that many; three traps and he's out of them. And if you force the rogue/sorc to dip into his item, provided it's charged, you've forced him to use up resources.

The thing about traps is that there can be a lot of them, if needs be. Further, something like this corridor could be situated in a place they have to cross back and forth to get to areas they need to re-visit. Maybe a clue in one side of it tells them how to find or use something that lies on the other, or reveals that something innocuous they bypassed is actually important. If that "something important" then gets used on THIS side, they now have had to cross the same set of pendula two more times.

[Andreaz]

Few traps beat, for me, the pure love that is the Slime Cistern Flush.
Try something conceptually like that. Dungeon is entered from below. On the middle floor there is a pit full of slime for garbage disposal. On the upper floor a swimming pool used for whatever (maybe it's an altar?). Pool has a trapdoor to the garbage, which has a trapdoor to the entrance. Both are rigged to explode when an intruder walks by. Cue party being exploded, followed by green slime flush thrashing people around, then drowning them, then reminding them they're breathing in green ****ing slime.

[Flickerdart]

Low op characters. (Though there is a dragon encounter coming up soon.)

The party (or at least the Rogue) WANTS traps. So I gave him traps. And he proceeded to decide the trap was too complex and just bypassed it. I could throw an Avatar of Cthulhu, 3 Elder Evils, and the 9 Princes of Hell into a trap, and the party would just d-door past it. (OK, so the Elder Evils and Princes of Hell probably have ways to stop d-door, but I think you get my point. Short of me setting up ways to keep them from using d-door, there is nothing stopping them from just bypassing it.)
The designers' characters were also low-op. Level 11 is still legendary, by RAW. Don't expect low-level plots to fly smoothly, simply because of the resources legendary characters will possess that allow them to render those stories moot.

[Urpriest]

You don't have to use antimagic to stop teleportation or make it less desirable:



The above quote comes from the "Teleport" spell, but the use of "teleportation" can refer to any spell with the teleportation descriptor, including Dimension Door. So as long as you have strong energy nearby, you can make teleportation riskier or even disable it outright in certain situations without littering your dungeon with AMFs or banning it.

The tricky part about using this in a real game is you have to make the strength of the energy involved rare enough that the PCs can't use something similar when they need to keep an enemy from teleporting, but common enough to be plausible when you use it. Also, whatever level of energy you establish as "strong enough", you need to make sure you won't need a villain to teleport in similar circumstances. Overall too much work to be useful outside of niche cases.



Yes, it would. D-door out would get them past both the trap and the undead.


That's why the undead are incorporeal, they can just come after them.

[Vrakk]

It has been already suggested and I agree with - make the party want to encounter the trap. Use gems as part of a magical focus, use expensive/rare poisons, or if you are a stickler for spell components you can find a way to work those into a trap area. A specific lichen/mushroom growing near the trap, etc. Or if it's an area they have to clear out (like a mine that was run over by monsters) where the party knows that others who don't have the skills to clear the traps safely will be coming in behind them.

[Psyren]

The tricky part about using this in a real game is you have to make the strength of the energy involved rare enough that the PCs can't use something similar when they need to keep an enemy from teleporting, but common enough to be plausible when you use it. Also, whatever level of energy you establish as "strong enough", you need to make sure you won't need a villain to teleport in similar circumstances. Overall too much work to be useful outside of niche cases.

Except it doesn't merely stop teleporting - it can also make it "hazardous." The nature of that hazard is entirely up to you. So you can still have your bad guy flee, and come back either scarred and extremely vengeful, or deformed in some way (which has the added benefit of making the PCs feel like they inflicted lasting punishment on him) or he could even ended up Cursed With Awesome by getting diverted to somewhere nasty like the Plane of Shadow for a brief moment in transit, and coming back with a new ability or even an extra passenger that wasn't intended.

Meanwhile, "hazard" for the PCs can be all downside. Sure you can teleport past that trap, but when you reappear it'll cause a loud BANG that will alert every monster in 100 yards. Or you roll on the rod of wonder table. Or they come out a bit too close to it and have to make a save (with a bonus) as if they had set it off. There's all kinds of shenanigans you can pull that will still make teleportation useful in a pinch, but shift it from being the first resort to the last one, as it really should be.

[Urpriest]

Except it doesn't merely stop teleporting - it can also make it "hazardous." The nature of that hazard is entirely up to you. So you can still have your bad guy flee, and come back either scarred and extremely vengeful, or deformed in some way (which has the added benefit of making the PCs feel like they inflicted lasting punishment on him) or he could even ended up Cursed With Awesome by getting diverted to somewhere nasty like the Plane of Shadow for a brief moment in transit, and coming back with a new ability or even an extra passenger that wasn't intended.

Meanwhile, "hazard" for the PCs can be all downside. Sure you can teleport past that trap, but when you reappear it'll cause a loud BANG that will alert every monster in 100 yards. Or you roll on the rod of wonder table. Or they come out a bit too close to it and have to make a save (with a bonus) as if they had set it off. There's all kinds of shenanigans you can pull that will still make teleportation useful in a pinch, but shift it from being the first resort to the last one, as it really should be.

Eh, while there are definitely things that break the symmetry, fundamentally you're still on the hook for coming up with a system that consistently makes teleportation more of a risk for PCs than for villains, and in a system and setting with so much PC/NPC symmetry that's really hard to do. Even if you're not bothering to come up with formal rules for it, "consistent enough for a non-stupid fantasy novel" is still a relatively high bar to pass.

[ShaneMRoth]

Suppose you arrange for a series of scenarios that cause the characters to exhaust their daily supply of Dimension Door spells by the time they get to the area with the trap.

The details are beyond me at this point, but if getting to the area of the trap required the casting of a series of Dimension Doors in the first place, then by the time the characters got to the area, they would no longer be able to cast the spell because they are out of them.

Yes?

No?

Maybe?

[Psyren]

Eh, while there are definitely things that break the symmetry, fundamentally you're still on the hook for coming up with a system that consistently makes teleportation more of a risk for PCs than for villains, and in a system and setting with so much PC/NPC symmetry that's really hard to do. Even if you're not bothering to come up with formal rules for it, "consistent enough for a non-stupid fantasy novel" is still a relatively high bar to pass.

That's still far easier than you make it sound. Most villains are, well, evil, and most PCs are not; even when they are, they tend to be small fries like Belkar, not true badasses like Xykon/IFCC/Hel, nor even Tarquin. It's easy for something that would be labelled "hazardous" by most people to be benign or even beneficial for a lich, fiend, or even just a particularly evil mortal who happens to have some supernatural backing - an evil deity bending the rules for a favored servant, an evil artifact he found that just happens to be Powered By A Forsaken Child (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PoweredByAForsakenChild), or even just knowing where and when to use it because they are the ones who built the dungeon in the first place.

Not that you even need an explanation beyond giving him Mordenkainen's Macguffin of Safe Travel, that lets him overcome the interference without consequences, for whenever he needs to flee. He's an NPC, you can do that. Really, all this takes is a modicum of imagination.

Is it fair? Absolutely not, and it's not supposed to be either. If the escape deck wasn't stacked in the villain's favor, (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/VillainTeleportation) defeating him for good wouldn't be satisfying.

[Gabrosin]

What I'm missing here is how the PCs know that the door on the other side of the trap is the exit to the trap. You don't need to have it be another trap... that's going to feel like you, the DM, specifically crafted this trap for a group of players who keep using DDoor. Instead, put them in a situation where the direction they need to go isn't obvious until they solve the trap.

Alternately, set up traps that aren't there to be bypassed, but are there to protect something important: the prince(ss) to be rescued, the macguffin to be purloined, the map to the secret fortress, the entrance to the BBEG's personal plane where he waits with his horde of minions, looking at his watch impatiently and tapping his foot.

Your PCs are using a spell to get them easily from point A to point B. You need your solution to stop involving point B.

[Urpriest]

That's still far easier than you make it sound. Most villains are, well, evil, and most PCs are not; even when they are, they tend to be small fries like Belkar, not true badasses like Xykon/IFCC/Hel, nor even Tarquin. It's easy for something that would be labelled "hazardous" by most people to be benign or even beneficial for a lich, fiend, or even just a particularly evil mortal who happens to have some supernatural backing - an evil deity bending the rules for a favored servant, an evil artifact he found that just happens to be Powered By A Forsaken Child (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PoweredByAForsakenChild), or even just knowing where and when to use it because they are the ones who built the dungeon in the first place.

Not that you even need an explanation beyond giving him Mordenkainen's Macguffin of Safe Travel, that lets him overcome the interference without consequences, for whenever he needs to flee. He's an NPC, you can do that. Really, all this takes is a modicum of imagination.

Is it fair? Absolutely not, and it's not supposed to be either. If the escape deck wasn't stacked in the villain's favor, (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/VillainTeleportation) defeating him for good wouldn't be satisfying.

Making it a Macguffin is dangerous, since it potentially puts it in the PCs' hands. And it's hard fluffwise to justify evil being especially good at teleporting, given how neutral-leaning the Astral plane is.

I'm not saying you can't use this sort of thing ever: even something as simple as "in this Epic adventure you're visiting an enormous planar nexus where teleportation doesn't work" is limited enough to be viable. But using it as a general tool, rather than as a spot solution, is just so setting- and flavor- warping that I can't really picture any story-focused GM going for it with any regularity.

[Psyren]

Making it a Macguffin is dangerous, since it potentially puts it in the PCs' hands. And it's hard fluffwise to justify evil being especially good at teleporting, given how neutral-leaning the Astral plane is.

I'm not saying you can't use this sort of thing ever: even something as simple as "in this Epic adventure you're visiting an enormous planar nexus where teleportation doesn't work" is limited enough to be viable. But using it as a general tool, rather than as a spot solution, is just so setting- and flavor- warping that I can't really picture any story-focused GM going for it with any regularity.

I don't see it as "setting-warping" (or flavor-warping for that matter) at all. This would only apply to very localized spots in a setting, namely the villain's stronghold, which just so happens to be the exact sort of place the GM (e.g. the OP in this example) would want to limit teleportation. And then throw in a couple of other highly magical places for good measure like the Hallowed Heart of the Fae Forest or whatnot. Nor does it have to be "Epic" - something as pedestrian as a volcano doom fortress, or a labyrinth behind a particularly tall waterfall, would have "strong physical energy."

In fact, to quote the GM in question directly:



I don't want to stop them from doing it. I just want them to think twice before they do it, and be willing to try something else. If it works sometime and fails others, they can never know what the outcome will be. Maybe they'll think it's worth the risk, maybe they won't.

This is exactly the sort of outcome a clause like "hazardous" is meant to evoke, and this is exactly what the designers had in mind when they wrote it. The whole point of that line is that teleportation is something you primarily use to get to the dungeon. Jumping around inside like Nightcrawler on crack after you're there is *supposed* to be dangerous, or at the very least not a tactic to be taken lightly. Ergo, working as intended.

Lastly, Macguffins that work for the villains and not so much for the PCs are similarly easy to devise. Or perhaps they have to purify it first, or just figure out how it functions, before it works for them - hooray, plothooks.

[Sith_Happens]

Other than an anti-magic field (which I strongly dislike, since it seems like I'm saying "no, you have to do it my way!"), what are ways of negating dim door? (Because, yes, I want the party to do it "my way.")

1. Make them need it more times than they can use it.

2. Semi-frequently make them regret it.

[Urpriest]

I don't see it as "setting-warping" (or flavor-warping for that matter) at all. This would only apply to very localized spots in a setting, namely the villain's stronghold, which just so happens to be the exact sort of place the GM (e.g. the OP in this example) would want to limit teleportation.

Remember, unless you're doing a one-shot, there's no one villain you can hook up with this. It's something you can use occasionally, but it's going to get pretty silly when a half-dozen entirely unrelated villains all have the same sort of restricted lair, especially if they all have access to ways to bypass the restriction as well.



And then throw in a couple of other highly magical places for good measure like the Hallowed Heart of the Fae Forest or whatnot. Nor does it have to be "Epic" - something as pedestrian as a volcano doom fortress, or a labyrinth behind a particularly tall waterfall, would have "strong physical energy."

Something pedestrian, as mentioned, opens you up to PC use. If a tall waterfall does it, then the PCs are going to find one to make their hideout when they're being pursued. If you use a volcanic lair, then the next time they're in the lower planes and the fiends they're fighting are using their teleportation SLAs the PCs will point out that the lake of fire is probably going to make it hazardous for them.



This is exactly the sort of outcome a clause like "hazardous" is meant to evoke, and this is exactly what the designers had in mind when they wrote it. The whole point of that line is that teleportation is something you primarily use to get to the dungeon. Jumping around inside like Nightcrawler on crack after you're there is *supposed* to be dangerous, or at the very least not a tactic to be taken lightly. Ergo, working as intended.

Jumping around like Nightcrawler isn't generically supposed to be hazardous, though, because blink dogs exist. It may be hazardous in special circumstances, but fluffwise in the average dungeon there should be nothing wrong with Nightcrawlering all over the place, or all of the Nightcrawlery monsters would die out.




Lastly, Macguffins that work for the villains and not so much for the PCs are similarly easy to devise. Or perhaps they have to purify it first, or just figure out how it functions, before it works for them - hooray, plothooks.

And again, you really think you can get away with that every campaign without raised eyebrows? There's a reason Macguffin is one of the most recognizable TVTropes terms.

[Psyren]

Remember, unless you're doing a one-shot, there's no one villain you can hook up with this. It's something you can use occasionally, but it's going to get pretty silly when a half-dozen entirely unrelated villains all have the same sort of restricted lair, especially if they all have access to ways to bypass the restriction as well.

Any bard worth his salt would tell you it's pretty standard for the BBEG to have his evil lair in a suitably menacing locale actually. And really, I'd consider it expected behavior when druids are leaping out of the potted fern to try and kill you :smallbiggrin:


Something pedestrian, as mentioned, opens you up to PC use. If a tall waterfall does it, then the PCs are going to find one to make their hideout when they're being pursued. If you use a volcanic lair, then the next time they're in the lower planes and the fiends they're fighting are using their teleportation SLAs the PCs will point out that the lake of fire is probably going to make it hazardous for them.

And I'm fine with the PCs using this too, but in general it's less effective on their end. if the PCs have a "hideout" from which they never stray, something is going pretty wrong in the campaign. The PCs should be the ones forced on the offensive, storming the bad guy's fortress - not lollygagging around the game room, shooting pool and channel-surfing until Fzoul, Manshoon, Voldemort et al. finish conquering the rest of the planet and can be arsed to go and get them.


Jumping around like Nightcrawler isn't generically supposed to be hazardous, though, because blink dogs exist. It may be hazardous in special circumstances, but fluffwise in the average dungeon there should be nothing wrong with Nightcrawlering all over the place, or all of the Nightcrawlery monsters would die out.

Only if they live exclusively in Evil Overlord Dungeons (and similar "strong energy areas"), which Blink Dogs don't.


And again, you really think you can get away with that every campaign without raised eyebrows? There's a reason Macguffin is one of the most recognizable TVTropes terms.

They can catapult their eyebrows to the ceiling for all I care :smalltongue: PC teleportation is an ability that should be limited once you're in the final dungeon for a number of reasons; far greater GMs than I, including the Giant, agree on that one. It harms tension and plot, it has unexpected results if the players try to go somewhere they aren't supposed to, and even from a purely mechanical standpoint it can mess with the combat math. Unlimited teleportation a la the Warlock is even worse, because it then becomes the proverbial hammer and every single obstacle the proverbial nail.

The designers, in an oft-overlooked show of wisdom, knew that - and accordingly they built a clause into the spell that meant you did not need the far more contrived counters of spraying your dungeon with dimensional locks and AMFs to preserve that tension. Instead, they included something broad enough that even a non-magical bad guy might have a chance at messing with teleporters if the plot called for it, without players feeling like they're being treated unfairly, because the spell contained that line since 3.5's inception. And I for one think the game is better for it.

[P.F.]

put them in a situation where the direction they need to go isn't obvious until they solve the trap ... set up traps that aren't there to be bypassed ... Your PCs are using a spell to get them easily from point A to point B. You need your solution to stop involving point B.

This is probably the best suggestion so far. No door. No "safe spot." No "other side." Just the trap. Without successfully interacting with the trap, there is nowhere to go.

[Dread_Head]

What I'm missing here is how the PCs know that the door on the other side of the trap is the exit to the trap. You don't need to have it be another trap... that's going to feel like you, the DM, specifically crafted this trap for a group of players who keep using DDoor. Instead, put them in a situation where the direction they need to go isn't obvious until they solve the trap.

This is a good suggestion. Have the door be hidden so that they need to spend time in the dangerous area searching for it or disable the trap. Why would you build a trap with an obvious exit and then have that exit be the true one? It doesn't need to be trapped itself, just a distraction from the real door. Or have the door only become clear when the trap is deactivated.

[Jay R]

Dimension Door is a valid tactic. Remember that you don't want to nullify it. You merely want to make it less than perfect universal trap avoider. So occasionally have the next room be something that would be easy to beat if they had walked in the door.

Just once, have a group of wandering monsters in the next room, so that the party dimension doored into a melee, with no archers or casters safe out of melee range.

And just once, trap two rooms in succession, with the second trap going off as soon as somebody is on the floor.

And just once, have the floor of the next room filled with caltrops. Not deadly, but certainly something to think about when before DD-ing past a trap.

You'll find that doing this rarely will only increase their respect for the possibility, and they will start looking for ways to disarm some traps, only jumping past them when they can't find the switch.

And that's all you wanted. Avoiding some traps with the spell is perfectly reasonable. You just want some variety.

[Sith_Happens]

Dimension Door is a valid tactic. Remember that you don't want to nullify it. You merely want to make it less than perfect universal trap avoider. So occasionally have the next room be something that would be easy to beat if they had walked in the door.

Just once, have a group of wandering monsters in the next room, so that the party dimension doored into a melee, with no archers or casters safe out of melee range.

And just once, trap two rooms in succession, with the second trap going off as soon as somebody is on the floor.

And just once, have the floor of the next room filled with caltrops. Not deadly, but certainly something to think about when before DD-ing past a trap.

You'll find that doing this rarely will only increase their respect for the possibility, and they will start looking for ways to disarm some traps, only jumping past them when they can't find the switch.

And that's all you wanted. Avoiding some traps with the spell is perfectly reasonable. You just want some variety.

And just once, have a set of stairs going up immediately on the other side of the door. Go go gadget shunting damage!

[ericgrau]

It's not unreasonable for a high level dungeon to expect teleportation, flight, invisibility and so forth to be the norm. You can forbiddance (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/forbiddance.htm) or dimensional lock (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/dimensionalLock.htm) some areas. Compared to the cost of the trap itself they aren't that expensive to hire an evil cleric for. Even if that evil cleric is too powerful to be under permanent employ. You can make an important item inside an enclosed space, while the enclosed space is dangerous. You can port in, but then you get hurt. You can port out to safety, but then you can't get the goal.

Maybe not all traps will be this way, but many will consider whoever they are trying to keep out. Heck maybe some will be designed mainly to stop flight even though the party doesn't even use flight. You can give foes realistic planning without picking on the players.

[Magma Armor0]

And just once, have a set of stairs going up immediately on the other side of the door. Go go gadget shunting damage!

Heck, why not just go full-blown roadrunner on them and have the door just be painted on? this has the added bonus of shunting them right back into the trap, probably triggering it. (bonus points if the painted-on door is at the top of a ramp, so they roll all the way back through the trap.)

[Jay R]

Heck, why not just go full-blown roadrunner on them and have the door just be painted on? this has the added bonus of shunting them right back into the trap, probably triggering it. (bonus points if the painted-on door is at the top of a ramp, so they roll all the way back through the trap.)

Very nice idea. That is so elegant. I would probably build an actual wooden door up against sheer rock, rather than painting it, but I love the idea.

[But why would the builder have included it? Is he expecting dimension door? No, it's just a door to nowhere, with its own small trap. Or maybe a door to a very shallow cupboard.]

But remember - the dimension door trick should still work often. Perfect success for the DM is the party putting the dd trick aside sometime, out of fear, even when it would have worked.

You aren't trying to nullify their abilities, just make them come up with the occasional new idea.

[Gabrosin]

Very nice idea. That is so elegant. I would probably build an actual wooden door up against sheer rock, rather than painting it, but I love the idea.

[But why would the builder have included it? Is he expecting dimension door? No, it's just a door to nowhere, with its own small trap. Or maybe a door to a very shallow cupboard.]

But remember - the dimension door trick should still work often. Perfect success for the DM is the party putting the dd trick aside sometime, out of fear, even when it would have worked.

You aren't trying to nullify their abilities, just make them come up with the occasional new idea.

I did this exact thing in my last dungeon. There was a door that just opened to solid rock face with a sunburst trap symbol on the door behind it. The PCs had to find a password to get through a transparent magical barrier and go in a different direction.

[Elkad]

I'll add one. Especially useful if their D-Door has limited uses.

Put something they really really need to run from on the other side of the trap. When they blink across they are suddenly trying to disable the trap from the wrong side while the demon lumbers slowly their way...

I love it when the party starts pulling out the old bear jokes. "Remember, you don't have to outrun the 32hd earth elemental, you just have to outrun the Paladin!"

[Segev]

One other thing to think about, given your other thread... did the players enjoy the trap? I know you were frustrated, but what did they think of it and their solution? Was it "too easy?" DId it make the rogue/sorc feel satisfied that his trap-solving skills were needed, first to find it then to think about using their dimension door to bypass it?

Obvously, you don't want to keep frustrating yourself, but be certain you know what, if anything, they disliked about it, so you're not increasing those aspects in your solution.

[Kesnit]

One other thing to think about, given your other thread... did the players enjoy the trap? I know you were frustrated, but what did they think of it and their solution? Was it "too easy?" DId it make the rogue/sorc feel satisfied that his trap-solving skills were needed, first to find it then to think about using their dimension door to bypass it?

Obvously, you don't want to keep frustrating yourself, but be certain you know what, if anything, they disliked about it, so you're not increasing those aspects in your solution.

The Rogue was frustrated because the solution wasn't "find the lever and roll to disable the trap." My wife was frustrated because she misunderstood my description of the hallway and did not realize the blades or the pivot point could be destroyed. (My bad on that. I thought I'd made it clear, but obviously not.)

[Segev]

The Rogue was frustrated because the solution wasn't "find the lever and roll to disable the trap."Well, now you know to offer a few of these sorts of traps for them. If they enjoy the "rogue tax" traps, let them have a few. It will make them happy and it takes no real effort from you.


My wife was frustrated because she misunderstood my description of the hallway and did not realize the blades or the pivot point could be destroyed. (My bad on that. I thought I'd made it clear, but obviously not.)If you ever see your players missing or ignoring something you think is obvious from what you've already said, never be afraid to call for a search or spot check (or a knowledge, wisdom, or intelligence check), and give them the glaring piece of information. They will feel their mechanics were useful, and you will get across what you were trying to say.

And I do mean come right out and say it. "Give me a search check as you look over these blades, please? Hm... [Highest Roller], you notice that the hinges at the pivot point are under a lot of strain; if they were to be physically broken, the blades would probably stop swinging."

Heck, combining the solution to these two... let the rogue make the Disable Device check, and tell him that information once he succeeds. He knows how to disable it, because he's the expert on these things.

[P.F.]

did not realize the blades or the pivot point could be destroyed

Video game syndrome.